Temptation Eyes

Thursday morning and I slept well again last night. Yesterday wasn’t a good day by any means of measurement; the less said about the day the better, methinks. I was mentally and physically exhausted when I got home from the office, so I basically collapsed into my easy chair and spent most of the evening until Paul got home trying to decide what I want to read next. I really couldn’t pick anything; but I suspect I am going to probably go for a Carol Goodman next–I may change my mind by the time I get home from work tonight, but that’s where I am at right now with everything,

People are starting to arrive and/or get excited about Malice Domestic, which is happening this weekend in Maryland. I had hoped to go to Malice, but the scheduling conflict with the Edgars and New York–I really couldn’t take that much time off from work–prevented my attendance. I had such a lovely time at Left Coast so I am already experiencing FOMO seeing everyone’s arrival posts. Have fun, everyone–and certainly wish good luck to everyone nominated for an Agatha Award this Saturday–lots of friends on those short lists, as always–I have so many talented friends!

When Paul finally got home–he also had a shitty day–we watched White Hot: The Rise and Fall of Abercrombie and Fitch–which was interesting, but really didn’t tell me anything I didn’t already know. It did remind me of their catalogues, which were essentially homoerotic porn–every gay man had a copy, it seemed–but I was never terribly interested in their clothes despite really liking their ads (I mean, come on–gorgeous practically naked young people? Sex sells, people.) and I don’t think I ever set foot in one of their stores. But the thing that kept striking me was seeing how much American culture has changed, and changed so dramatically, since the turn of the century. Nowadays you can’t imagine a company selling exclusion and “we’re just for the cool kids” and becoming successful; especially since it was clear the company’s standard for “cool kids” was nearly exclusively white. And then of course there were the sexual harassment/abuse charges against Bruce Weber, the photographer whose images helped create the look the company was going for and helped the company take off into the stratosphere–something I’ve always thought would make an interesting back story for a crime novel, to be honest; maybe someday that book will get written–but I didn’t really learn anything from the documentary that I didn’t already know, so while it was interesting, and yes, I enjoyed watching it…I guess I was expecting more? I’m always a little disappointed when I see a documentary but don’t get any new information about it. I will say I’d recommend it, if for no other reason than for people today to see how recently societal viewpoints about beauty standards and “pretty privilege” have shifted and changed–and the horrible fact that an enormous corporation could build its entire public image on a distorted, racist view of how beauty in our culture and society is defined without anyone even saying, “hey, wait a minute…”

And yes, I do get the irony of me writing that while posting blogs every day with photos of beautiful men showing off their bodies.

I still haven’t made as much progress on everything I have to get done as I would have liked this week and it’s already Thursday, which means, inevitably, that I will not be able to be a lazy slug this weekend and just lie around doing nothing while binge-watching television shows and/or reading. But I did make some progress yesterday, which was nice, and I just wish I wasn’t so damned tired when I got home last night from work. I will probably be tired when I get home tonight, but I need to put the dishes away from the dishwasher and finish a couple of loads of clothes that I started doing the other night. But I am excited for my trip next week, and looking forward to being in New York and seeing people again and just, in general, having a lovely time of things–even if it means getting up on the stage at the banquet and speaking for a moment or two. Yikes! But I have to get that story finished, I have to get my emails under control, and there are some other odds and ends I need to tie up before I leave town on Tuesday. Huzzah? Today already feels like a better day, and like it can be more productive, so fingers crossed that it will continue this way as it goes forward. I did sleep well again last night–I am afraid to celebrate the sleeping well contingent of my existence for fear of jinxing it–and maybe, just maybe, I am starting to get used to this schedule after all these years? (It certainly feels like it’s been years)

There are worse things, I suppose. And on that note, I am heading into the spice mines. May your Thursday be lovely and charming and marvelously productive, Constant Reader. I will talk to you again tomorrow morning.

Superstar

Don’t you remember you told me you loved me baby?

Ah, the Carpenters. I loved them so when I was younger and Karen was still alive and recording. That voice…simply amazing. One of the stranger Youtube wormholes I’ve gone down recently are young people who’ve never heard the Carpenters before reacting to their music–and without the contexts of the time when the Carpenters were recording, they can simply appreciate the music as beautifully produced and the timeless beauty of Karen Carpenter’s voice (the Carpenters weren’t considered “cool” at the time they were recording their hits and becoming one of the biggest musical acts in the country; they were clean cut, all-American goody two-shoes types that even Richard Nixon praised as “the right kind of young Americans”–and of course, the Nixon stamp of approval guaranteed they would never be considered cool).

Then again, ABBA wasn’t considered cool, either. I’ve always thought you could tell a lot about a person as to whether they liked and appreciated ABBA and the Carpenters or not.

I was again tired when I got home from the office yesterday. I did some laundry and a load of dishes while Scooter howled constantly at me to go sit down so he could sleep in my lap. Usually he’ll sleep there for about five minutes then get bored and go somewhere else; this time he stayed in my lap for hours. I couldn’t focus on reading anything new–I tried, but my brain was too tired–and so I went down a Youtube wormhole for a while watching history videos. I didn’t work on my story at all yesterday, but I did get some other things–more of a mindless nature–worked on as well. Slowly but surely I am making progress down my to-do list, and I am not feeling quite so overwhelmed today as I was feeling yesterday morning. I still have ridiculous amounts of work to do and get done, but it’s not so seemingly impossible this morning as it looked yesterday morning. It may have something to do with the terrific night’s sleep I enjoyed last night–one never can be sure, after all–but I do feel very well rested this morning and maybe not quite “I can conquer the world” good, but more awake and aware and alive than I felt yesterday morning.

I’m also starting to get excited about next week’s trip to New York. I am still dreading having to get up on-stage and speak–fortunately I don’t have to be up there for long–which is still long enough for me to spend the entire day stressed and worried and unable to relax. But New York will be marvelous, and I hope to see friends while I am up there in and around and at the Edgar banquet. I’ve not been to the banquet is a good long time–we also haven’t had one for two years, but even before that it had been a hot minute, maybe four or five years since the last time I went? So I am looking forward to the trip and looking forward to seeing people, but there’s also an underlying sense and feeling of dread.

I still haven’t decided what my next book to read will be; there’s so many good ones in my TBR pile that it is very difficult to decide sometimes. I got some more book mail yesterday, every last one of them looking really interesting and fun to read, and so on top of the pile they went. Heavy heaving sigh. But I will have airport time and flights to get some reading done next week; so it’s just a matter of deciding what I want to read on the trip. Which reminds me, there’s yet another trip for this summer I need to plan, provided the world doesn’t shut down again. Heavy heaving sigh.

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.

I’ve Found Someone of My Own

Ah, Tuesday, and so much to get done. Heavy heaving sigh.

What else is new? I am trying my hardest not to give in to that overwhelmed feeling I am currently experiencing this morning; I even woke up before the alarm, but while still a bit on the groggy side, I must confess I actually feel rested this morning. We’ll see how long that lasts, but I hope to be able to ride that feeling through the day and get a lot done; at the very least, check things off the list (which is really growing and more than a little out of control). I worked on my story a bit last night–Paul was out having dinner with a friend–and also managed to finish Eli Cranor’s Don’t Know Tough, which I have a lot of thoughts about; I just have to get them cleared up in my head and maybe digest them a bit more. I really enjoyed the book, if you’re wondering; it’s very well done and tightly, beautifully written, with more than a few hints of Megan Abbott, Daniel Woodrell, and some Kelly J. Ford tossed in for good measure. It’s definitely an excellent addition to the canon of Southern rural noir, that’s for sure.

I now have to decide what to read next, and that’s not going to be easy. There are some other amazing and well-reviewed and award-nominated debuts still in my TBR pile. (DAMN, I could have made that a project: The Debut Novel Extravaganza!)

I did some work, as I said, on the short story yesterday; it’s still nowhere near a complete first draft but that’s okay; it will get there eventually, and there’s always this weekend (I am going to be deeply panicked this weekend, pushing to get a lot of things finished before heading off to New York next Tuesday) but that’s okay; I don’t mind. I have to only work on Monday next week, and then have the rest of the week off to travel and do the Edgar banquet and everything else I have to do while I am in New York next week, but even just thinking about it makes me feel very tired. Heavy heaving sigh. But there’s naught to be done but to start tackling the list, is there? After all, ignoring the list only makes it grow exponentially larger…as I have often learned to my great dismay.

So, I feel good this morning. We’ll see how this day plays out as it goes forward, won’t we? I will try very hard to not allow myself to get sidetracked and distracted as I go through my day at the office; I will also need to swing past the mail on my way home from work today–I think more books are waiting for me there, to be completely honest–and when I get home I am going to try to keep my head down, make a protein shake, and spend a few more hours with my short story. I am also getting very excited about my trip to New York next week–although the infection numbers there are not a little unsettling, and the lifting of the mask mandate on airplanes by an unqualified judge isn’t very pleasing for me, either. But I can take rapid tests along with me so Paul and I can test each other every day, and of course, I will definitely have to take one before I return to the office the following Tuesday.

I am trying not to think about the potential irresponsibility of going on this trip, to be honest.

But overall, I think I’ve recovered from the trip to Left Coast at long last–it took longer than necessary–and hopefully I have this New York trip planned perfectly so that there will be recovery time before I have to return to the office.

And on that note, I am heading into the spice mines. Have a lovely Tuesday, Constant Reader, and I will talk to you some more tomorrow.

Sweet and Innocent

Well, that was a morning, was it not?

I took today off for appointments, and as is my usual wont, tried to cram in as many as possible on the same day to save paid time off. So far today I’ve been to the West Bank, the North Shore, and Metairie, but am now safely home and ready to kick it back and get to work on this massive to-do list I somehow have managed to avoid for most of the weekend. (I justified my utter and complete laziness this weekend on being home for the weekend and it being my first weekend at home after a trip; justification can always be found, frankly. I have a PhD in it, methinks, or at least should) But I feel relatively good, despite having to get up so early this morning for the trip to the West Bank (oil change at my dealership, before a trip out to the North Shore and…well, you already know the rest). I took along Eli Cranor’s stunning debut novel, Don’t Know Tough, to read in various waiting rooms, and it is actually a most marvelous read. I finished Marco Carocari’s Blackout over the weekend, which was also a lovely read, and we did a lot of binge-watching. We finished watching Why Didn’t They Ask Evans, which we rather enjoyed, and then moved on to get caught up on Servant, which is actually rather disturbing yet compulsively watchable.

I did manage to get some writing done this weekend–I really don’t know why it is like pulling teeth these days, but it is, and I guess I just have to learn how to live with that, really. I did have an easier time with the first draft of a first chapter that was more of a “let me try this, I’ve been thinking about this project for a really long time and since nothing else seems to be flowing, it can’t hurt…” but that’s not what I need to be worrying about at the moment, is it? I really need to get this short story finished, and I don’t know why I am having so much trouble with it here, to be honest. It’s got a great title, it’s an interesting idea, and I just have to get the tone and voice perfectly right for it to work…but I don’t know if I am having imposter syndrome symptoms or what, but this story has really been a struggle for me.

Who knows? Maybe now that I’ve admitted it publicly, maybe the story will start flowing when I get back to it today. One can certainly hope, at any rate…I’ve also been trying to write an entry about the fifth season of Elité, with little success. It is probably one of my favorite shows of all time–and after a disappointing fourth season, it was great seeing the writers and producers kick the show back into that high gear it operated under its first three seasons. Season 4, to give credit where it’s due, was not going to be an easy one to pull off; replacing the characters that left the show in the wake of Season 3 (Polo, Lu, Carla, and Nadia) wasn’t going to be easy, and the new characters were basically made the focal point of the show in season 4 when we didn’t really know much about them. I did give them a break–it’s hard to introduce so many new characters into a cast and integrate them into existing storylines while giving them their own–but it was still a bit disappointing. Season 5 spring-boarded off season 4, though, and much of the drama in the new season had its roots in the past season…but they did a much better job integrating the new characters–Ivan, Isadora, Cruz, and Balil–then they did the new characters in Season 4. (Okay, well, they kind of forgot about Balil in the final episodes–I don’t think we even saw him again after the body turned up in Episode 4, and Omar didn’t really have much of a story; so I am thinking he is one of those not returning for season 6)

But I will say this: episode 5 of season 5 of Elité has one of the most erotic and authentic gay sex scenes I’ve ever seen on television or in film; it’s almost borderline porn. It was so lovingly and beautifully shot; the soundtrack music was perfect; and it brought tears to my eyes. (Similar to the scene in It’s a Sin when the main character is about to bottom for the first time and his partner tells him he needs to wash up first–I laughed and got teary-eyed; both scenes will certainly be talked about should I ever teach another erotica writing class or workshop) I know, I know, I’ve been screaming to the clouds about Elité since we first started watching it way back in the Before Times.

Heavy heaving sigh.

And now I am going to head back into the spice mines and see if I can’t get a draft of that story finished today. Wish me luck, Constant Reader–I’ll let you know tomorrow how it went.

Put Your Hand in the Hand

And now it’s Easter! Happy Easter to those who celebrate, to those who don’t, well, Happy Sunday.

I bought a flat of fresh Ponchatoula strawberries yesterday. It was an impulse buy, of course; I was heading down Tchoupitoulas Street in the midst of my errands when I saw a little stand set up, and impulsively I pulled over, got out, and forked over twenty bucks for some beautiful and delicious fresh strawberries. I made myself a protein shake with some of them (along with two bananas) once I’d gotten home and put everything away; for the rest of the day whenever I walked into the kitchen for anything I grabbed some strawberries and ate them quite happily. There really is nothing like Ponchatoula strawberries freshly picked from the fields. Today I will have to freeze some, naturally; I am now really excited for Creole tomato season, which should be here at any moment (I’ve started looking for them every time I set foot in a grocery store). It’s very odd how delighted I am about having these strawberries; I only wish I could eat even more of them…but I am only one person and there are only so many I can eat…and the frozen ones will be perfect for slushing up my protein shakes a bit, giving them more of a daiquiri style consistency.

I really do need to write about Ponchatoula strawberry season at some point–and Creole tomatoes.

As usual, I was very tired once I got home from the errands. I was also startled at how hot and humid it was outside yesterday; despite being only mid-April it felt like early June already. This does not bode well for the unholy hell that is the usual New Orleans summer. They’re predicting a slightly less active hurricane season this year–slightly being the operative adjective doing the heavy lifting in that sentence. I can’t imagine that the Gulf water temperature isn’t going to be significantly elevated this year, which means that the hurricanes that come into the Gulf of Mexico will intensify dramatically once they reach the hot water of the Gulf before they head ashore. Yay? Heavy heaving sigh. But it is what it is, and God knows you cannot control the weather, so it looks like it’s going to be another one of those insanely intense years of storm-watching for six months. But once I was home in the cool and out of the muggy nastiness that was yesterday’s climate, I felt a bit better. Paul came home from his trainer–which was weird, I’d gotten used to him going to the office directly from the trainer and having the rest of the day to myself. We watched The Truth About Pam on Hulu, which was creepy and weird and bizarre–although at the end of the final episode they actually showed footage of the real-life Pam, and you can see how Renee Zellweger actually underplayed the role. We then moved on to BritBox and Why Didn’t They Ask Evans?, an adaptation of one of my favorite Christies–one I feel doesn’t get nearly the credit it deserves–and then had to look up the American title (Why Didn’t They Ask Evans? is the British title, which was better than the American title, which I had to look up because I couldn’t remember it, and it was The Boomerang Clue, which is clearly inferior. Why did her American publisher do this to her books when the British title was always superior? Murder on the Orient Express was actually originally published in the US as Murder in the Calais Coach, which is clearly inferior). It’s very well done, and I always liked the characters of Bobby Jones and Lady Frankie Derwent. WIll Poulter is a very good choice for Bobby Jones; he’s becoming one of my favorite working actors.

So I kind of didn’t really do a whole lot yesterday. But it was a good battery-recharging kind of day, which was necessary and needed, methinks, and so today I can dig into all the things I need to get moving on and make some forward progress. Paul will be heading out today to one of the many Easter parades around town to hang out with an old friend who is in town, and I need to get going on my lists and things. I got my tax refund already–I literally scanned the signature sheets and emailed them back to my accountant on Monday and yesterday morning it had already hit my bank–which means I also need to strategize bill payments. I had also meant to spend some time with Marco Carocari’s Blackout yesterday, but I think this morning, once I have finished this and made myself a second cup of coffee, I will head to my easy chair with said coffee to read a few chapters and get a feel for his writing style and the story. Tomorrow I am taking a sick day; I need to take the car in for an overdue oil change at the crack of dawn tomorrow, and as such I made appointments for the afternoon in which to get some things taken care of with my routine bi-annual servicing to make sure things aren’t breaking down somewhere; so tomorrow I’ll be out running around most of the day in the heat. Huzzah? Fucking hardly.

I also need to get a lot of other work done today as well–writing, editing, organizing, and so forth. I’d like to get that working first draft of my story done today, and maybe even the first chapter of the book I started working on this week to get my writing kick-started again; I also need to cut up these strawberries and start putting them into freezer bags for future protein shakes. The glamour around here truly never ends, does it? And there’s cleaning to do, as always, and organizing, and so forth–all that lovely stuff that I absolutely love to do.

And on that note, probably should head into the spice mines and get my day underway.

For All We Know

When I got up at the Lefty Banquet last weekend and said we were living in a golden age of crime fiction, that wasn’t just smoke I was blowing up the audience’s ass to get applause (I literally have no idea how to get an audience to applaud, or laugh, or cheer, or do anything other than point and laugh at me and the blather coming from my lips and directed out by a panicked, terrified mind); it is something I truly believe. Every time I pick up a book by someone who is currently flourishing and publishing, I am rarely, if ever, disappointed; every year brings a fresh new crop of great books by current authors as well as a plethora of amazing new and diverse voices. The sheer creativity in plots and stories and characters; the language usage; the seamless construction of story that flows and keeps the reader turning the page is truly remarkable.

And Catriona McPherson is a force of nature.

There was no mistaking the smell. Except, come to think of it, that’s not true. It was all too easy to mistake the smell, to miss that one crucial note in the putrid bouquet. For a start, it was damp, and there was a years-deep rind of mould coating the bricks, eating into the mortar, softening the cheap cement that, once upon a time, had been used to pour the floor.

In the damp, rot had come along and worked away at the joists and beams, at the stacks of softening cardboard boxes and yellowing newspaper. The drains were bad too, always had been; a faint drift in the air like a sigh of sour breath. Cats, of course. Or maybe foxes. Something had got in and stayed a while. And why wouldn’t a cat or a fox stay, out of the rain, with a buffet of little scurrying things laid on? Little scurrying things that must have thought they were safe in here. They added their bit to the chord, too, but in such tiny dabs it would take a bloodhound to find them.

No bloodhound needed for the bottom layer. Under the damp and rot, under the drains and vermin, there was something else, sweet and soft as a whisper. And what is whispered was a tale of death. Unmistakable, inescapable death. Not the snuffing out of a mouse either, not some grasping stray, not a proud wild fox brought to broken, whimpering nothing. This was something much bigger.

Catriona McPherson is one of the more prolific writers in our genre; producing a minimum of two books per year (if not three); the flyleaf of A Gingerbread House lists twenty-six titles to her credit thus far in a career with scores of award nominations and wins. I’ve yet to read either of her two series, the enormously popular Dandy Gilver series set between the wars in the UK, or her “scot in America” series, but I hope to spend some time with both at some point in the future…it’s been hard enough keeping up with her stand-alones–which I’ve enjoyed tremendously each time I’ve plucked it from the TBR mountain and settled in for a wild and fun ride in my easy chair.

The problem with writing about one of McPherson’s stand-alone novels is you don’t want to spoil any surprises for those who’ve not had the pleasure to sit down with it as of yet; no easy task for either a professional reviewer or yours truly; a humble blogger who simply likes to share the good news about another terrific read for those who are always on the lookout for another terrific writer whose career they should be following. The main character in this story is Tash Dodd, daughter of a family who’ve built up a shipping business into a major firm over the course of her childhood and adult life; a bright, intelligent and hard-working young woman with big plans for the future of the company and her role in it. She loves her parents and disdains her brother, whom she thinks is a bit of a dullard. But one day looking around in her father’s office, she hears a phone ringing and finds a burner, hidden beneath piles of paper, and against her better judgment, her natural curiosity–thinking her father is having an affair, why else would he have a burner phone–she answers.

And finds out that there are things far worse to learn about her father than an affair.

The chapters about Tash are entwined with other chapters about other single women; lonely women with different stories and backgrounds, who are looking for something more from their lives, only to find out there is danger in looking for something more. These women are beautifully drawn characters, flawed and three-dimensional and relatable despite being completely different from each other–a masterstroke of characterization, I might add–as well as different from Tash, distinct in their needs and wants and desires and lives. What do all four women have in common? How does what Tash is experiencing and going through–having gone into hiding while trying to figure out how to extricate her family business from the horror they’ve gotten enmeshed with–relate and entwine with these women?

Brilliant written and structured, McPherson draws her reader in with her gorgeous prose and once the reader is in the palm of her hand, she slowly draws her fingers in to squeeze every last bit of suspense and tension her reader can handle out of her story and characters, far exceeding reader expectations.

Well done, Catriona. Highly recommended.

Do You Know What I Mean

The traditional mystery often gets a bum rap by mystery fans. I’m not sure why that is; these books have never gone out of style, have never decreased in popularity, and have always been the backbone of the crime/mystery genre. They are often (wrongly, I think) identified with Agatha Christie–if anything, Christie should be identified with every sub-genre of crime/mystery fiction. She wrote private eye novels (Poirot); dark noir (Endless Night); spy fiction (N or M?, The Man in the Brown Suit, They Came to Baghdad); historicals (Death Comes as the End); and even romantic suspense (as Mary Westmacott). Sure, she often relied on the amateur sleuth–her most famous amateur being probably Miss Marple–but she literally did everything first, really.

Probably why everyone refers to her as the Queen of Crime Fiction.

But the traditional mystery, for some reason, gets short shrift in our modern world, despite being one of the most popular subgenres of crime fiction. Why? I don’t really understand it. Sure, there’s not any blood or sex or violence–the sort of thing generally used to sell everything from television shows to movies to laundry soap and deoderant. Many of us grew up reading books about amateur detectives, from Nancy Drew to the Hardy Boys to Trixie Belden. So why do so many turn their noses up at the traditional mystery, also known as the cozy mystery?

I think it’s much harder to write about crime without using the tough guy male lead (stereotype), blood, violence, swear words, and sex. Is it this lack of the “rougher” aspects of crime that earned these books the nickname “cozy”?

What precisely does the word cozy mean, used as a book descriptor in this way? Ask five mystery fans/writers, and you will get five different answers. It’s often hard to quantify the variety of subgenres within the mystery/crime field. Everything else aside, I think the most important thing, the key, for a mystery novel to get this kind of classification is that the book focuses, on one level, on a sense of community; the reader develops a warm, comfortable feeling, the kind that you usually get from visiting family and friends you don’t get to see all of the time. You open the book and start reading and already feel relaxed and at home; happy to see people you care about, are interested in, and are excited to find out what they have been up to. Donna Andrews’ Meg Langslow series is an excellent example of this; so is Leslie Budewitz’ Spice Shop mystery series (both series, obviously, are favorites of mine). These books welcome you in, invite you to put your feet up, get comfortable, and spend some time with your old friends you’ve not seen in a while.

This, naturally, is very difficult to establish when writing the first book in a new series of this kind; how do you immediately establish this warm environment where the reader feels comfortable enough to kick off their shoes and relax? It’s not the easiest thing to pull off for an accomplished writer; so it’s all the more remarkable when someone nails it in their very first book.

Mia P. Manansala nailed it in her debut.

My name is Lila Macapagal and my life has become a rom-com cliché.

Not many romantic comedies feature an Asian-American (or dead bodies, but more on that later), but all the hallmarks are there.

Girl from an improbably named small town in the Midwest moves to the big city to make a name for herself and find love? Check.

Girl achieves these things only for the world to come crashing down when she walks in on her fiancé getting down and dirty with their next-door neighbors (yes, plural)? Double check.

Girl then moves back home in disgrace and finds work reinvigorating her aunt’s failing business? Well now we’re up to a hat trick of clichés.

And to put the cherry on top, in the trope of all tropes, I even reconnected with my high school sweetheart after moving back to town and discovered the true meaning of Christmas.

Okay, that last part is a joke, but I really did run into my high school sweetheart. Derek Winter, my first love.

First of all, can we talk about the voice?

It is impossible not to fall in love with Lila’s voice from the very first sentence of the book. She is smart and funny and eminently likable, which is important in a traditional mystery (no one wants to read a cozy whose main character is an unlikable bitch) and much harder to do than most people who don’t actually write books think it is. Lila is a remarkable character; very clear-eyed about what she wants and what she doesn’t, as well as who she thinks she is and wants to be. She’s returned from her big escape to the big city to the small town she wasn’t terribly happy in when she was growing up–her past experiences continually are reminding her, and not in pleasant way, of why she left in the first place. She never intended to return home (as Thomas Wolfe said, you can’t go home again), but she is back and rather than focusing on what she is certain everyone she knows or is related to sees as her “failure,” she intends instead to focus on helping save her aunt’s restaurant business.

The immense strength of this story rests upon those family bonds, and Lila’s recognition of just how important those bonds–family, friends, community–actually are to her; and her growing realization, over the course of the books, that those things she once thought were strangling and restraining her are actually where her own power comes from.

The mystery itself is also strong: Lila’s wretched local ex, whose mother has since married a businessman who rents Tita Rosie’s building to her and is a total dick, has taken to writing shitty reviews of local restaurants, apparently targeting one and trying to destroy its business before moving on to another. Lila’s relationship with him is also strained; and she also doesn’t like the dickish stepfather either. It is while she is serving them lunch that her ex keels over face-first into his plate–dead from arsenic poisoning. In the food Lila fed him, and came from her aunt’s kitchen. The financially strapped business is shut down pending an investigation into the murder and a health department inspection, and there is the very real fear that Tita Rosie may lose her restaurant. Lila takes it upon herself to investigate and find the real culprit, to clear herself as well as her aunt and the beloved family business of any wrongdoing and scandal. The journey, which introduces us to her friends and family, and welcomes the reader into their charming world and community, twists and turns and is full of surprises every step along the way–as Lila also learns just how much the restaurant, her family, and her friends really mean to her.

This book is absolutely charming, well-written, and very fun. I cannot wait to revisit Lila and her crew in the second book, Homicide and Halo-Halo. Mia P. Manansala is definitely one to watch, and it’s going to be fun watching her career reaching even more heights than she has already achieved.

She’s a Lady

Saturday morning and I have errands to run today and chores to do; writing to get done and emails to write. I also want to spend some time today reading as well. I was a lolly-gag this morning, leisurely remaining in bed far longer than is my norm. It felt lovely, frankly, and I think it was exactly what I needed to get my body and my mind back in the order it needs to be in for me to function properly.

In other words, I think I have finally recovered from my trip to Left Coast Crime, which is marvelous.

Last evening I finished reading Catriona McPherson’s A Gingerbread House (more on that later), I actually wrote for a bit (more on that later) and then once Paul got home we binged through the rest of season 2 of Bridgerton, which I think I enjoyed much more than the first (despite the absence of gorgeous charismatic Regé-Jean Page, whom I stopped missing once the story really began going). I think I actually preferred the plot of season two more than the one for season one, and it was absolutely lovely seeing an openly gay actor (Jonathan Bailey) so brilliant and convincing in a traditional male romantic leading role. Is that homophobic of me, or a commentary on show business’ homophobia and fear of casting openly gay male actors in those types of roles? I am not sure.

So last evening was quite an accomplished one, and I was most pleased to see that going into work on Friday was actually helpful. I did manage to get a lot done in the office yesterday as well, which was lovely, and that carried over into my evening here at the Lost Apartment. Today, as I mentioned, I have errands to run (prescriptions, mail, groceries) and chores to do (dishes, floors, organizing) and I would love nothing more than to get some writing and reading done today as well. One can dream, can’t one? I want to get through the first draft of my story this afternoon, and I’d like to work some more on something else I started working on yesterday; nothing of import, really, simply a novel idea I’ve had for a very long time that, for some reason yesterday I couldn’t get out of my head, so I just went ahead, found the existing files, and started writing my way through the first chapter. It actually flowed pretty well, and before I knew it–and it was time to call it quits for the evening–I’d written well over a thousand words, which was marvelous, and had also done no less than a thousand or so on my story. This was pleasing, as Constant Reader is no doubt aware of how I always worry that the ability to write is a skill that I might lose at some point in my life, and it always, always, terrifies me.

I am absolutely delighted to let you know that my story “The Silky Veils of Ardor”, originally published in The Beat of Black Wings, edited by the incomparable Josh Pachter, has been selected as this week’s “Barb Goffman Presents” by Wildside Press in this week’s Black Cat Weekly. I am not the most secure short story writer in the world (many thanks to both Josh and Barb for their keen editorial eye that helped improve the story dramatically from the terrible first draft I wrote years ago), so these little victories help a lot with my Imposter Syndrome issues–which inevitably raise their ugly Cerberus-like heads all the time but especially when I am in the malaise period after finishing a novel manuscript, and especially if I am trying to work on something else and it simply isn’t coming. I am confident now that I will not only finish an initial draft of my story this weekend but perhaps even finish that first chapter I started writing last night and maybe even an outline/synopsis of said book project, which has been languishing in my head for at least a dozen years now, if not more. I mean, it’s not Chlorine, obviously; but that book is becoming even more complicated for me the more I research it–not a bad thing, but indicative of how much work the book is going to be. I was paging through William J. Mann’s Behind the Screen the other night, and I once again was amazed at how tunnel-like my vision was in my initial conception of the book and who the characters needed to be; but I also think the more research I do and the more fears I have of writing it making it all the more necessary for me to actually go ahead and do so.

I really need to work on my focus. I don’t know what it’s actually like to be able to simply write a book and block everything else out of my life in order to solely focus on the writing; my ADHD certainly makes it more difficult and I am inevitably always juggling a million things at once. What must it be like to be able to laser focus all of my attention and energy on a book? It will be interesting to see how retirement, should I ever reach that place, will change and/or make a difference in my writing, won’t it?

I imagine I won’t know what to do with all the extra time. I’ve gotten so used to being scattered in my approach to everything I write that I don’t know what being singularly focused that way would be like, or if it’s even possible for me.

On that somber note, I am heading into the spice mines. Have a lovely day, Constant Reader!

Uncle Albert/Admiral Halsey

Friday morning and the first Friday I actually have to go into the office in quite some time. We’re back to four days a week in the office, and since I worked at home on Wednesday, that means I have to go in today. I have work to do that can, of course, be done just as easily in the office as it was at home. I also don’t have to be there as early as I have to go in on the clinic days, so I didn’t have to get up at six this morning–which was lovely–but I also could have easily stayed in bed much longer than I did this morning. I will probably not be able to find a place to park when I finally do go in, which is a pain–I hate trying to find a place to park–but I can hang with it all, I suppose. I was, again, too tired to read when I got home from work last night; hopefully that will not be the case this evening.

I actually worked on my story yesterday, and yes, it was like pulling teeth writing a thousand words yesterday. I don’t think those words are any good, mind you; but at least they are written and can be fixed at some point. I know what the point of the story is, but yes, sometimes you have to force the words out and make progress. I kept hoping the hole in the page would open and the words would just start flowing the way one would hope they would, but perhaps that will be the occurrence this weekend, when I don’t have any day job responsibilities or anything else to deal with along the way. Tomorrow errands will need to be run–mail, groceries, prescriptions–all of which are fine, really; it just seems to wear me out whenever I do those things, and the mood for writing forever lost at that point. But I have hopes that I haven’t burned out my writing engine, despite the lack of any real writing since I turned in the manuscript for A Streetcar Named Murder.

I suppose I did write that other short story, “The Rosary of Broken Promises,” since then, so it’s not entirely a lost cause. Maybe there are other factors at work at my inability to write anything lately or be as “prolific” as I usually am (I am often accused of being prolific, which always amuses me; how can one be prolific when one has to force one’s self to actually write all the time, and will take any excuse not to write?), but it is concerning and a bit disturbing to have these fallow times. I had wanted to get a lot done this month, but as the month is gradually slipping through my fingers, I see that plans will have to be pushed off again and my schedule disrupted and changed again. We are leaving for New York a week from this coming Tuesday, which seems kind of insane since I just recently returned from a trip. COVID caution to the winds, I suppose…but after that I am not going anywhere until June. I also have a July trip and a September trip planned (look at me, turning into a frequent flyer!)…crazy, am I right?

We also started watching the new season of Bridgerton, which we are rather enjoying. It’s weird, the first season dropped with so much fanfare and everyone was talking about it, yet this season–whose plot seems a lot more interesting than that of the first season–has no one talking about it. Sure, the loss of Regé-Jean Page is keenly felt, to be certain; but I like that the two main female leads of the season as south Asian and the male lead is played by a gay man. We watched three episodes last night, and look forward to diving back into it this evening, once my writing chores for the day are finished.

I am kind of looking forward to this weekend, to be honest. I wasn’t home last weekend, and of course, sleeping late is always a joy (despite the resetting of my internal body clock). I could have slept really late today had I not had to rise to go into the office, which is also fine, you know. I’m just grateful to be sleeping well again, after the horrible sleep of the weekend trip to Left Coast Crime.

And on that note, I am going to head into the spice mines for the day. I have to get ready to go into the office, and pack my bag, and my lunch, and…have a lovely Friday, Constant Reader.

Ain’t No Sunshine

I am not a huge fan of public speaking. It causes me horrible anxiety and stress, because I suffer from a really horrible case of stage fright. I’m not sure why that is–probably a side effect of being horribly shy and self-conscious–but it is what it is. Moderating panels, even being on them, are difficult for me; let alone having to get up in front of a room full of people and trying to sound eloquent and smart. Being on a panel isn’t nearly as stressful as moderating one, of course; but the worst is having to get up in front of a room full of people and speak. If there is a hell of any kind, regardless of spiritual beliefs and values, mine would be having to stand in front of a room full of people and having to speak, endlessly on a loop. That would be my personal hell.

I had to speak at the Lefty Awards banquet, since Mystery Writers of America sponsored the banquet. Stan and Lucinda, who organize Left Coast Crime, asked me to get up and speak a little bit about MWA. All week leading up to it I agonized over what to say, and how long I should be up there. I made notes, practiced, thought about it and agonized and then finally, they called me up to the stage and I had no idea what to say as my mind went completely blank. I tried to grab hold of the podium so my hands wouldn’t visibly shake but naturally, at one point started talking and gesturing with my hands…which were shaking. I do remember saying that we are currently living in a golden age of crime fiction–and that a quick glance at all the nominees for Best First over the past few years for every award in the genre would show that the future of the genre is in very good hands.

One thing I’ve really enjoyed throughout my life as a reader is the discovery of debut authors, and watching their careers take off due to their hard work and talent.

And keep your eye on Wanda M. Morris.

The three of us–me, my brother, Sam and Vera or Miss Vee as everyone in Chillicothe called her–looked like a little trio of vagabonds as we stood in the Greyhound Bus Station, which, in Chillicothe, meant a lean-to bus port in the parking lot of the Piggly Wiggly. By God’s grace, we’d survived summer’s blazing days and humid nights, the fire ant stings and mosquito welts, and all the side-of-the-mouth whispers that floated around town. What happened? What did those young’uns do? Why is Ellie Littlejohn really leaving town? Even though I was headed to Virginia on a full-rde scholarship to boarding school, it didn’t stop some people from around town from talking in hushed tones and asking meddlesome questions.

The morning sun sizzled across the black asphalt parking lot scattered with a few dented cars and an old Ford pickup. But we were the only ones waiting for the 7:15 bus headed north. I wore a tie-dyed T-shirt and a pair of jeans Vera had cut off at the knees when they got too short. She hadn’t gotten to the jeans Sam was wearing because they were about two inches above his ankles. His yellow T-shirt still bore the cherry Popsicle stain from the day before. And from the looks of it, he hasn’t combed his hair, either.

Wow, where to start with this rollercoaster ride?

I guess the easiest place to start is with how authentic Ms. Morris’ representation of small rural Southern towns in the 1970’s is. As someone who spent time in the deep south in a small rural town (and the country) in the 1970’s, Morris brought Chillicothe to life realistically and so well I could completely visualize it–from the lazy flies and the mosquito bites and how box fans just push the hot air around. Vivid images of my own past flashed through my mind every time Morris took us back to Ellise’s childhood in Chillicothe, where all her dark little secrets were first born and hidden away. She masters two separate timelines in this masterful work–Chillicothe back when she was a child, and her life in modern day Atlanta. That poor little girl got scholarships and worked her butt off to become a lawyer, and now works for a large corporation in Atlanta–a corporation currently being accused of racist hiring practices, along with protestors outside the building. One morning Ellise comes to work to meet with her married boss–with whom she has been having a rather long-term affair with, following him from a job with a legal firm to this company–early in the morning, only to discover his dead body in his office, shot through the head. Ellise immediately backs out of the office and heads back down two floors to the legal department, and doesn’t call the police, doesn’t say anything to anyone–and fortunately, there are no security cameras up on the twentieth floor to capture her tell-tale image for the police or anyone who wants to go looking for what went on up there when the man was murdered.

But was having an affair really enough justification for Ellise to NOT call the police?

Of course not…and this is where the fun begins. Ellise is also hiding a lot more than just the affair with her boss–she has run away from a traumatic childhood and now moves in rarefied air–and doesn’t want anyone in her new life to know anything about her old.

Then Ellise is promoted to replace her now-dead lover/boss, and despite asking for time to think it over, it is announced as a fait accompli, which understandably makes Ellise suspicious. Something weird is going on up there on the twentieth floor, and she is smack dab in the middle of it all–but what? Was her boss’ death a suicide, as everyone at the company desperately wants to believe, or was he involved in something else, something else that led to him being murdered?

The thrills and suspense build from the very beginning–what is going on there? What does any of this have to do with Ellise and her past? Morris expertly weaves her two tales of Ellise and her life, the two timelines, together seamlessly and it is impossible to look away or put the book down. But even more important than the story is the character of Ellise, who is at the heart of the story and without whom the reader has no buy-in to the story. Ellise is compelling, juggling her identity as a modern Black woman with no small success in her life alongside the poor little girl with the alcoholic and abusive mother, abused not just by family and the nastiness of the vicious hateful little town but also the virulent ugly racism of the times. Her brother Sam–her only living relative–has had a much harder time of it than she has, and she struggles with trying to balance helping him out when he needs it or the tough love she thinks he needs to straighten out his life–but the strength of their bond is beautifully depicted. Ellise has constructed this incredible facade to hold the world at bay, but inside she is still that same scared little girl from Chillicothe, once again–as she did when she a little girl–trying hard to survive in an incredibly hostile world not of her own making.

This is an extraordinarily strong debut novel, and I cannot recommend it enough. Wanda M. Morris is going to be a major player in our genre–you can quote me on that.