I Guess That’s Why They Call It The Blues

My brake light came on in my car yesterday, so I have to take today off to take it in to the dealer for an inspection at eleven this morning. Hardly thrilling, and not how I wanted to spend my day–but Ivy Pochoda’s Wonder Valley will make the trip with me, so there’s that. The book continues to enthrall me; it really is quite remarkable, and I don’t think I’ve read anything quite like it before, either.

That is quite an accomplishment.

Writing/working on that short story the other day seems to have shaken me out of the glumness about writing/career that I’ve been experiencing lately; there will obviously continue to be peaks and valleys, but I am thinking more about being pushed, and pushing myself to do better work. I watched the Joan Didion documentary last night, The Center Will Not Hold, and that, too, was inspirational. Writing should always be about your quest to find the truth, whether it’s about a situation or your characters or your work or your life; a way of learning,  not only about the world but primarily about yourself. I am going to finish that story today–after the car dealership–and then I am going to work on some other things. I am also going to clean the Lost Apartment a bit, possibly run to the gym for a light workout–something I’ve been putting off for quite a while–and get organized, with a plan to get me through the rest of the year.

I am most likely going to read Donna Andrews’ latest, How the Finch Stole Christmas, when I finish reading Ivy’s wonderful book, but I may read Joan Didion’s Miami soon as well; I’ve never read any Didion. I’m aware of her, and her body of work, but I could have sworn I had a copy of Play It as It Lays around her somewhere, but I looked for it last night and couldn’t find it. It also required me to look in a vastly neglected bookcase, the one nestled in the corner where the staircase makes its first ninety degree turn on its way upstairs, and I noticed a lot of books that I’ve not only been meaning to read but others that I’ve forgotten that I owned. It’s always fun, for me, to look at a book and try to remember it’s provenance, how it founds its way into my collection: oh, yes, I met him at a conference and he was lovely; oh, someone mentioned this book on a panel I was on and I was intrigued by it; oh, I was wondering what happened to this book, I remember going to the signing and enjoying the talk immensely; and so on The only Didion I can lay my hands on right now is Miami, which seems like a perfect time for me to read since I am getting ready to start working on the Florida Bouchercon anthology. Didion may just be my muse; I’ve been thinking about writing a sort of memoir lately (because that is what the world needs; another memoir from a writer), but it’s something I’ve unknowingly been gathering material on for many years, and rediscovering my journals will be an immense help in that regard as well. We shall see.

And on that note, it is perhaps time to return to the spice mines; I have many emails to answer and generate before I depart for the dealership on the West Bank this morning.

Here’s a Calvin Klein underwear ad:

04454edf04e6f0286629a6336724e9a6

Stuck on You

Nothing makes me angrier than when a writer slags off a genre, or a style of writing. Every genre comes in for it now and again; but without question the most maligned genre is also the biggest and most successful: romance.

You think it’s so easy to write a good romance novel? Try it sometime. It isn’t easy, by a long shot, nor is it something that I would ever dare attempt. The closest I’ve come to writing one–actually, there are three–would be with Sorceress, The Orion Mask, and Timothy. But those were also crime/suspense novels, with a dash of romance thrown in.  I don’t know that I could write a strictly romance novel. Perhaps someday I will try, just to see if I can do it.

I’ve written some short stories that would, or could, be classified as romance; I am currently trying to write one that I promised to an anthology and should have been turned in months ago. It’s actually a story that’s been in my head for a long time; it’s a sequel to a story I wrote a long time ago, “Everyone Says I’ll Forget In Time.” That story was originally published in an anthology called Fool for Love, edited by Timothy J. Lambert and R. D. Cochrane; a wonderful anthology in whose pages I appeared with numerous other writers I admire, some of whom were just getting started and have become writers of note. I’d intended to write the sequel for a second anthology Lambert and Cochrane were putting together, Foolish Hearts, but I never wrote the story or they decided they didn’t want one from me or something; it’s lost in the mists of time but if I had to hazard a guess I would say I was supposed to write one for them and wound up not doing it.

I’ve been worried lately about my lack of motivation with writing; wondering if, with all these abortive short story problems I’ve had lately that perhaps I had, finally, run out of juice for writing and was finished. But yesterday I opened a new word document, and over the course of the day I managed to write almost three thousand words of a story called “Passin’ Time,” which is, at long last, the sequel to “Everyone Says I’ll Forget in Time.” I had to reread the original in order to get the names of the characters, and I have to say, it was quite a lovely little story, if I do say so myself. “Passin’ Time” is a title I’ve always wanted to use for a New Orleans story; it’s a uniquely New Orleans saying; it means waiting; because in old New Orleans at least, you always found yourself waiting–waiting for the parade to show up; waiting for the streetcar; waiting for the bus; waiting in line at the grocery store; waiting, waiting, waiting. We call that “passin’ time,” and you generally do it by talking to the other people who are doing that as well. Now, of course, everyone has a cell phone and there are parade tracking apps; even the New Orleans MTA has an app so you can see where the streetcar/bus is. Writing the story, thinking about the phrase, made me a little sad and nostalgic for times past; yet another little piece of old New Orleans that has changed over the last decade or so since the levees failed and the city rebooted; one of the little things that was so friendly and charming and lovely about this city that made it so different and precious, something that was so worth saving.

Here’s the opening of “Everyone Says I’ll Forget In Time”:

The bed still seems empty every morning when I wake up.

It’s been almost two years since he died. We were together for almost fifteen years, and the disease took us by surprise. Then again, you never see things like that coming. I suppose on some level we knew we weren’t immortal, but it was something we never talked about, never planned for. Sure, we had powers of attorney paperwork and wills and all of that in place, but we never thought we would ever need them. We loved each other and had a wonderful life, and thought it would go on forever.

But cancer doesn’t care about love when it starts rotting you from the inside out. And when it finally took him, my life didn’t end. I didn’t go into the grave with him, no matter how much I wanted to, no matter how much I just wanted to curl up and cry. I still had my horror novels for teenagers to write with deadlines looming, a cat to take care of, bills to pay, a life to somehow keep living. The world didn’t stop turning, even though I thought it should. I had to get used to all the changes, the little ones that you don’t think about so they blindside you and make your eyes unexpectedly fill with tears and your lower lip quiver.  I had to get used to cooking for one, shopping for one, and deal with those sudden moments in department stores when I’d see a shirt he’d love and pick it up, carry it to the cash register, and have credit card in hand before I’d remember, and somehow manage to hold myself together while smiling at the clerk and saying, “Um, I don’t think I want this after all” before returning it to the display table and fleeing the store. I had to find ways to fill those hours that used to be our time together, flipping idly through the many channels on the television looking for any distraction to take my mind somewhere else. I had to get used to sleeping alone, to not having something warm and cuddly next to me every night and every morning. There were no more pancakes to surprise him with in the morning, on a tray with a glass of milk, to wake him with. I’d had to accept that I would never see the sleepy smile of childish delight he always displayed when he smelled the maple syrup again. He was so cute, just like a little boy on those mornings when I’d decide to give him his favorite treat. I got through it all, I survived, I went on. I went through the closet and the dresser and took his clothes to Goodwill. I did all the things you are supposed to do, and I got through it all. But the bed still seems empty every morning when I wake up. The house seems quieter, no matter how loud I play the stereo. The world seems different, somehow—the sun a little less bright, the sky a little less blue, the grass a little less green.

Everyone says I’ll forget in time.

I am trying to mirror that melancholy, that slight sadness, that poignant matter of factness, in the new story. I hope it turns out well. I really want it to.

For Throwback Thursday, here’s a Marky Mark Calvin Klein ad. (And thanks for no one pointing out that yesterday’s was actually a Perry Ellis ad.)

gal-calvin-wahlberg-jpg

Oh Sherrie

Wednesday morning. I just paid the bills, so the glow of seeing my post-electronic-paycheck-deposit swollen bank account has worn off more than a little bit, but hey, what can you do? Bills must be paid–the little mundanities of life, you know? Bills must be paid, floors must be cleaned, dishes must be washed, laundry must be folded, faces and scalps must be shaven, and so it goes, every morning, every few weeks, every month, every year, ad nauseum.

I slept fitfully last night but at least I feel rested this morning and not foggy; yesterday was one of those dreadful morns where I was tired and sluggish and wasn’t really able to shake it off, the kind of tired that aches. That was partly because, of course, of working in storage Monday and moving boxes around; my back muscles are still achy this morning and my legs feel a bit tired, but nothing that I can’t handle and nothing I can’t get through. I am, of course, behind on everything, but I am taking Paul to the airport tomorrow since I don’t have to go to work until later–he was surprised when I offered, but I had to remind him (and myself) that part of the reason I wouldn’t take him to the airport had everything to do with hating driving and not the drive itself; now that I have the new car and no longer hate driving…rides aren’t really an issue for me anymore.

It’s amazing what a difference a reliable, lovely new car can make in one’s life; which is something I have to remind myself of every time I make that substantial payment every month.

The MWA anthology deadline is Friday, and it’s kind of a relief to know that I’ve accepted the fact that I won’t make it. The second story, or even revising the first one, aren’t an option and I have some other things I need to get done that are more pressing. Having Paul gone means I’ll have a needy cat to deal with, but I will also be incredibly bored; and what better way to deal with boredom than getting things done?

Also, I am editing the St. Peterburg Bouchercon anthology, Sunny Places Shady People, and the submission call went out yesterday. Here’s the link: one click here and there you are!

And on that note, I am back to the spice mines.

Here’s today’s Calvin Klein ad.

fd139cd422184324ca6cd16cc7aaaec4--middle-eastern-men-eye-candy-men

The Glamorous Life

So… I spent three hours in the storage unit yesterday.

The case of Mardi Gras Mambo is still missing.

I did find a few copies, and a stack of ARC’s, but where the hell could the rest of them be? They aren’t in the attic, they aren’t in any of the boxes I use for tables (don’t judge me) in the living room…mysteries abound. Maybe I need to hire Scotty to find them?

And the storage unit is totally organized now.

So…that box is probably stored somewhere in the Lost Apartment. Paul is leaving to visit his family for a week on Thursday, so it looks like I will spend part of that time he is gone turning the Lost Apartment inside out looking for the box o’books.

Heavy heaving sigh.

But I did some other fun things in the storage unit.

I certainly didn’t think I had any copies remaining of FRATSEX or Full Body Contact, so those were nice to find, and so were some of the other copies of my books. I also have a couple of boxes filled with anthologies I contributed stories to–who knew there were so many? I also found the Spanish translation of my porn, and the German as well. I also found copies of Men for All Seasons, the anthology that I sold my first ever short story to.

And I found the rest of my journals!

IMG_3423

I used to buy those blank books and fill them up with journal entries, as well as writing down ideas, books I wanted to buy, notes to myself, my work schedules, important phone numbers; they literally were my personal assistant as well as my journals. I stopped using blank books right around the time my first novel was published; and of course now I blog instead. Just opening them at random, I am amazed at how many of my entries start with I am so fucking tired.

Apparently, I’ve always been really tired.

Ah, well. It’s weird having my work week start on a Tuesday; I have a long day at the office today which enables me to have a half-day on Thursday, and I always work half-days on Fridays, so I can really ease into the weekend in a lovely, easy way. Yay, weekend!

And on that note, that spice ain’t gonna mine itself.

 

I Can Dream About You

Hello, Monday! How are you?

I’m in a remarkably good mood this morning, which is unusual for a Monday, and even more unusual for a Monday during which I intend to tackle my storage unit. (There are copies of Mardi Gras Mambo in there, I know there are, there has to be.) Granted, my mood will undoubtedly be completely different once I’ve finished that slog, but it must be done. I will not rest until I have found that case of books.

In other news, I am continuing to enjoy the hell out of Ivy Pochoda’s Wonder Valley, and have all kinds of thoughts about it that I can’t wait to share with you, Constant Reader–but they shall simply have to wait until the book is finished. It’s also making me think some more about an idea I had (what? I told you before, great books inspire me and give me ideas for my own stories! This is nothing new! Keep up, you there in the back) a while ago on our expedition to Bombay Beach and the Salton Sea. Seriously, if there’s ever a place that needs to be the setting for a short story/noir novel, it’s that town. The fact that hundreds of thousands of fish die there in the summer, gasping for air and making the surface look like its boiling, and that the shoreline is literally littered with fish corpses–that alone is a great opening scene, don’t you think? And that the stink of the rotting, dead fish can be smelled in Los Angeles when the wind is from the east?

There’s some serious metaphor just waiting to be written, don’t you think?

I am hoping that when I am finished in the storage unit I won’t be too worn out to come home and write. I just remembered yet another short story I promised, haven’t started, but at least I already had the idea for it. I need to work a mystery into it somehow, which I am not certain I can do, but maybe I’ll just write the story, see what happens, and then get input from the editor. (I also tend to think of mysteries as always involving murder, and that’s not necessarily the case.) We shall see.

Okay, I am going to finish straightening up the kitchen and drinking my coffee before heading off to the spice mines/storage unit.

Here’s another Calvin Klein ad.

5936388

99 Luftballoons

One of the things I managed to do during my Facebook exile was finish reading Adam Sternbergh’s The Blinds, which is, for wont of a better word, simply extraordinary.

the blinds

She’s old enough, at thirty-six, to remember flashes of other places, other lives, but her son is only eight years old, which means he was born right here in the Blinds. She was four months pregnant on the day she arrived, her secret just starting to show. If the intake officer noticed, he didn’t say anything about it as he sat her down at a folding table in the intake trailer and explained to her the rules of her new home. No visitors. No contact. No return. Then he taught her how to properly pronounce the town’s official name–Caesura, rhymes with tempura, he said–before telling her not to worry about it since everyone just calls it the Blinds.

Caesura.

A bad name, she thought then and thinks now, with too many vowels and in all the wrong places. A bad name for a bad place but, then, what real choice did she have?

Reclining now at two A.M. on the wooden steps of her front porch, she pulls out a fresh pack of cigarettes. The night is so quiet that unwrapping the cellophane sounds like a faraway bonfire. As she strips the pack, she looks over the surrounding blocks of homes with their rows of identical cinder block bungalows, each with the slightly elevated wooden porch, the same scrubby patch of modest yard. Some people here maintain the pretense of giving a shit, planting flowers, mowing grass, keeping their porches swept clean, while others let it grow wild and just wait for whatever’s coming next. She glances down the street and counts the lights still on at this hour: two, maybe three households. Most everyone else is sleeping. Which she should be, too. She definitely shouldn’t be smoking.

I read Adam Sternbergh’s debut novel, Shovel Ready, several years ago when I was moderating a panel at the MWA Edgar Symposium which he was on; he was nominated for Best First Novel and I have to say, I was completely blown away by it. (If you haven’t read it, you need to. NOW.) In the years since, I’d lost track of his career and his novels; there is only so much time  and there are so many great novels and great writers. But a friend had read The Blinds in an ARC (advance review copy) and raved about it, so I made a note of it. I was also able to get a copy at the HarperCollins group signing event at Bouchercon in Toronto–where I got so much of the great stuff I’ve been reading lately, well done, HarperCollins–and last week I started reading it.

Wow. I mean, seriously. WOW.

As a reader, I am constantly blown away by some of the amazing writers and books I read. As a writer, I am intimidated and shamed. I cannot even imagine conceiving of something remotely like The Blinds, and even if somehow I could, I couldn’t pull it off.

The premise behinds the book is that a medical science technology company has developed a process which can erase memories. The driving force behind this process development was to work with trauma patients, but the company also came up with a new use for it as well: rather than Witness Protection or life sentences in prison, people could be sentenced to have their memories of what they did or what they witnessed excised, and they could then live in relative freedom (restrained) in this small community of Caesura, in the heat-blasted dry wastelands of west Texas. No one knows who anyone is there; everyone takes a new name on arrival–one name chosen from a list of movie stars and another chosen from a list of vice-presidents–and then they live out their lives in a fairly dull, meaningless way in this town.

It actually sounds quite horrible, to be honest, and Sternbergh captures the bleakness of living there beautifully and chillingly.

The book opens with a murder taking place there…a few weeks after a suicide. And suddenly, the quiet, empty life everyone knows there is no longer quite so quiet and empty anymore. Has the experiment failed? Who could have committed the crime? And as you turn each riveting page, the story gets even more complex and horrifying as the truth slowly begins to unravel and you learn the secrets of Caesura, with the tension and suspense ramping up with every page until the most amazing, horrifying, and terrifying conclusion I have read in any novel in a long time.

The Blinds is going to be nominated for every award under the sun, and deservedly so.

And now, back to the spice mines.

Break My Stride

The regular season came to an end for LSU last night with a 45-21 win over Texas A&M, and I am going to miss the seniors and the guys the team will lose to the NFL draft. It’s been a pleasure watching you all play for the last few years. I also want to shout out to Danny Etling, who has never really gotten the kind of respect he earned over the last two seasons. He’s not Eli Manning, but he was a cool, competent quarterback who made some big plays and only threw two interceptions this entire season. That’s pretty amazing. And considering where the team was at one point, it’s no disgrace to take pride in how they closed out the season, winning six of their last seven games–including a win over Auburn, who went on to win the West division spot in the conference championship game by beating Alabama yesterday–the second CFS Number One team they defeated in three weeks.

GEAUX TIGERS!

I also continued working on the Scotty Bible yesterday–found some discrepancies that may not be able to be corrected, at least maybe not right away–but the ones I can’t correct are easily explained away; and I can correct things like the fact that Storm apparently had children in the first two books that completely vanished from the series later. Oops. (I’m not sure if they disappeared or just were never mentioned again; I don’t think I ever said Storm didn’t have children; I just never mentioned them, and that is kind of weird, really; why wouldn’t Scotty or his parents ever talk about his nieces and nephews? Although it might be kind of fun to bring them into the story at some point….hmmmm. Also, I mentioned in one book that Frank’s parents lived in Chicago and then in a later one that they were dead. I think I can correct that in the earlier book; let’s hope.

Obviously, I should have done this years ago.

But I have only one more book to go through–Garden District Gothic–which is incredibly exciting, and then I can create the Scotty Bible, which….is not so incredibly exciting. Ah, well. I have a lot to do today, so it’s probably best to get to it.

Here’s how it looks so far:

IMG_3417

 

Somebody’s Watching Me

I actually finished the first draft of a short story yesterday. It’s very rough, but it’s still a draft, and it’s finished. I’ll take it, thank you very much, and it was only 1200 words or so when I started working on it and it’s now about 3700, so I’ll gladly take a 2500 word tally for the day. Huzzah! I also started writing another one that’s at about 500 words right now, and I sort of have an idea where it’s going to go and how I’m going to finish it, so I take that as a win. I also have to write another one this weekend, and do some Scotty work and some other things, but am very excited to be writing again.

I’m still afraid I’m not able to do it on a daily basis, and everything I am writing is garbage, but hey, what can I say? Even producing work makes me feel insecure.

Paul and I have been watching the Hulu original series, Future Man, and Constant Reader, it’s hilarious, especially if you catch all the 1980’s references. But no worries, it’s just as enjoyable if you don’t. It’s a science fiction/time travel mess, borrowing tropes openly from other scifi–everything from The Last Starfighter to The Terminator to The Abyss–but it’s done reverentially, and it is very much aware. It does start a bit slow, but once it gets going it is hilarious. We’ll probably finish watching it tonight after the LSU-Texas A&M game.

The best character in the show is Wolf, played absolutely straight by Derek Wilson, who is absolutely pitch-perfect in the role. The show’s premise–a combination of both The Last Starfighter and The Terminator–is that in a dystopic future, the ‘Resistance’ sent a video game designed to find someone who would be their ultimate savior back in time, so that they can come back and kill the person who is, in this time, ultimately responsible for the dystopian future they live in. That person turns out to be Josh Futturman, who works as a janitor at Kronish Labs and lives with his parents. Played perfectly by Josh Hutcherson from The Hunger Games, Josh is just an ordinary guy, a bit of a loser with no girlfriend and no future–until the characters from his favorite video game, Tiger (Eliza Coupe) and Wolf (Derek Wilson) suddenly show up in his bedroom and change everything, Eliza Coupe is also terrific as Tiger–but the show doesn’t really hit its stride until they start traveling through time to save humanity from its ultimate destruction in their future. And my God, is it ever funny. Derek Wilson steals the show right out from under the rest of the cast, though–and if he doesn’t at least get an Emmy nom for Best Supporting Actor in a Comedy Series, there needs to be investigation into Emmy voting.

MV5BMTY3NjUzNzQwNV5BMl5BanBnXkFtZTgwMDAwNDMwNDI@._V1_UY1200_CR90,0,630,1200_AL_

Here’s Derek Wilson as Wolf:

images

And now, back to the spice mines. I want to finish that short story this morning before it’s time for the Iron Bowl.

And by the way, Ivy Pochoda’s Wonder Valley continues to enthrall.

 

I Just Called To Say I Love You

How was your Thanksgiving? Ours was rather lovely; we had our deep dish pizza and a lovely visit with our friend Lisa; then Paul and I watched three movies on Netflix: Fourth Man Out, Closet Monster, and Handsome Devil. We also watched another episode of a Hulu original series, Future Man; which we had given one more episode to get better. And the fourth episode definitely delivered. We laughed a lot all the way through it; and it finally started delivering on its premise.

The three movies were all gay films, which we generally don’t watch very often. I know I should be supportive of gay films, but so often they’re aren’t very good–or at least that used to be the case. When a major studio makes one (Philadelphia, In and Out, To Wong Foo, etc.) they’re awful; indies always mean well but don’t have the budget to really do them well or cast good actors, so we stopped watching them a long time ago. Every so often, a film like Beautiful Thing or Latter Days will come along, but still, fairly rare. My incredibly cynical self is very pleased to say that the three films we watched yesterday were enjoyable in varying degrees, which also makes me tend to think that perhaps we should watch more gay cinema. And really, isn’t mainstream film always a crapshoot, too?

Fourth Man Out was the first movie we watched; its about a group of four guys who’ve been best friends since they were kids and then one of them comes out to the others. It was a comedy, so the coming out was handled in a comedic fashion; the friends were a little taken aback, and then there was some awkwardness about what you can or can’t say around your gay friend which was sweet and kind of cute. The gay character was a mechanic, so there was a sense to me of ‘see, a gay guy can be just a regular guy’ about the movie which was well-intentioned but…the really charming part of the movie was watching the friends try to help him navigate the gay dating world, and there was a really charming scene where they take him to his first gay bar. And the ‘meeting someone from on-line’ trope was treated as comedy (and who hasn’t met someone whose picture wasn’t them?) and there were some moments that I thought might have been in questionable taste–but overall the film was charming. The lead, gay Adam, was played by Evan Todd, who’s very good-looking:

tumblr_o9jmg5lCng1urvepco3_1280

His best friend, Chris–and their relationship/chemistry was quite charming, was played by the impossibly good-looking Parker Young:

mgid_uma_image_logotv

Another one of the guys was played by Glee’s Chord Overstreet, almost recognizable in a heavy beard. But the movie’s true charm was the relationship between Adam and Chris; how they learn from each other and grow and finally find their perfect matches because of their friendship.

Closet Monster starred Connor Jessup from American Crime, who is an appealing and talented young actor I would pretty much watch in anything.

la-et-vn-emmy-contenders-chat-connor-jessup-20160510

This movie was apparently very popular on the indie art film festival circuit and won lots of awards; for me, it was the weakest of the three and were it not for Connor Jessup, we would have probably stopped watching. As a little boy, around the time his parents broke up in a very nasty and volatile break-up, young Oscar witnessed a violent hate crime against a gay teenager–and that, plus the divorce, have been deeply internalized and traumatized him as he comes of age as a gay teenager with an interest in horror movies and a desire to become a make-up artist for horror films. He’s applied to the best school for this in New York, and cannot wait to get away from this awful town he lives in. He’s desperately unhappy–who can’t relate to that–with big dreams, and is developing a crush on another boy he works with at a Home Depot type store. Wilder, played by Aliocha Schneider, is coolly confident in himself and tries to draw Oscar out of his own shell, with some success.

MV5BMTgxNTcwNTI1M15BMl5BanBnXkFtZTgwNTczOTQyNjE@._V1_UY317_CR10,0,214,317_AL_

The point of the movie is ultimately that Oscar needs to stop spinning his wheels and move in a positive direction in his life; and it does eventually get there after a bizarre costume party where he has his first sexual experience with a stranger and comes to terms with his feelings for his mother; his relationship with his father remains unresolved. But it was an arty film; Oscar’s hamster speaks to him in Isabella Rossellini’s voice–he got the hamster originally the day his mother left his father so it symbolizes the last time he was happy; and there’s a lot of moments where the director slaps the viewer in the face with his symbolism and hidden depths. There are some gorgeous shots, particularly at the end, but there are also some serious plot holes. But as I said, Connor Jessup is a very talented and appealing young actor, and he carries the entire movie.

The last film we watched, Handsome Devil, was by far and away the best of the three. Set in an Irish boarding school obsessed with its rugby team, it’s from the point of view of young Ned, who is bullied by his schoolmates in no small part because he doesn’t care about rugby and doesn’t fit in; he is played charmingly by Fionn O’Shea. He comes back to school against his will–his father and stepmother live in Dubai and for some reason he can’t live with them there; it’s kind of implied that he’s an inconvenience for them. He’s delighted when he gets to school to find out he’s got a single room and won’t be sharing. There’s also a really funny sequence where he talks about his English teacher; he simply turns in the lyrics to old songs for papers and get’s A’s; the song that is handed back to him with an A written on it to illustrate this voice over is Lou Reed’s “Walk on the Walk Side,” which is hilarious if you know the words.

Handsome-Devil2-1024x512

But he winds up with a roommate after all, Connor. Connor can’t go back to his old school–he was kicked out for ‘fighting’–AND it turns out Connor is a great rugby player; the long-missing piece for the school’s team which will make them champions. Ned reacts by moving all of their furniture to the center of the room, kind of forming a Berlin wall. They also have a new English teacher this term, Mr. Sherry, who is played by Sherlock’s Andrew Scott. Mr. Sherry, and his class, reminded me of Dead Poets’ Society, and I don’t think that was accidental. But Ned and Connor slowly become friends–Connor is Ned’s first friend, really–and of course there’s the requisite homophobia (they all treat Ned like he’s gay, but we never really know for sure) and obstacles for the boys to face before the film’s end. This movie is really charming, and is about friendship, and has some absolutely lovely moments. O’Shea is fantastic as Ned, and you can’t help but root for him as he learns who he is and what being a friend really means; Nicholas Galitzine plays Connor and does a fine job with a less complex part; but the chemistry between the two boys is terrific. I highly recommend this movie.

MV5BMjI4ZmRkMTYtNTFmOC00NDFjLWFhYjEtMTJhYjg4ODc5NjQyL2ltYWdlXkEyXkFqcGdeQXVyNDY5NTM2NjY@._V1_UY317_CR20,0,214,317_AL_

It was also highly educational to watch these films, and it also made me realize that I’m a bit of a snob when it comes to gay-themed films; I should probably watch more of them in the future–and I think I’m going to. Watching these movies reminded me of the kinds of novels Kensington used to publish after the turn of the century; particularly the novels of Timothy James Beck. I miss those novels, and Kensington did a great job of finding and publishing fun gay-themed novels in those days. I was one of Kensington’s authors; Kensington was where the first three Scotty books were published, and pulling together the Scotty Bible has also put me in mind of those days again. Kensington first published Rob Byrnes,  and also those wonderful novels by Michael Thomas Ford. Kensington was also home to William J. Mann’s fiction, from The Biograph Girl to The Men from the Boys, All-American Boy, and several others; Kensington also published Andrew Beierle’s The Winter of Our Discotheque, which remains to this day one of my favorite gay novels.

Sigh.

And now back to the spice mines.

Hold Me Now

Happy Thanksgiving! We have our deep dish pizza in the refrigerator, which we will be heating up later when our friend Lisa comes over to watch some movies; which is what we do every year for Thanksgiving. (Lisa is the one who introduced us to each other.) Today I am going to take a day off from writing and stressing; no news, no worries. Paul is going in to the office tomorrow, so I’ll have tomorrow to do some writing and editing and so forth and I also have Monday off as well. He’s departing to visit his mom for a week one week from today as well. So, yes, today is the day where I am not going to be stressed about anything and just relax and enjoy the day. I’ll probably spend Saturday doing copy edits and working on the Scotty Bible (which means, going through the books with post-it notes to mark pages with references to regular characters so I can check for continuity).

I finished reading Adam Sternbergh’s The Blinds last night, and it is definitely one of the best books I’ve read this year; it’s a remarkable concept, and Sternbergh delivers on it completely. It’s just exceptional. I’m going to review it here, but I am going to let my thoughts on it brew for another couple of days or so. I also started reading Ivy Pochoda’s Wonder Valley last night, and while I am only a few chapters in, it’s already blowing me away. This is some extraordinary writing and character development, people. I have Ivy’s earlier books in my enormous TBR pile, but I wanted to read this one and review it since it’s more current; her books will be moving up in the TBR pile now. I’ve now read some amazing books back to back; If I Die Tonight by Alison Gaylin, Sunburn by Laura Lippman, The Wife by Alafair Burke, and now The Blinds, and as I said, the Pochoda is also exceptional; I’ll be reviewing the others here closer to their release dates.

Glad I am not judging any awards this year or next. Whoa.

After abandoning the other short story I started working on another one. I wrote its first draft about thirty years ago, and of course, it’s terrible, but I liked the main character and I liked the setting, which are about the only things I am keeping for the story. I have, over the years, realized that the story is actually a great noir set up, so I am revising it accordingly, and while the story was originally about unrequited gay desire…I am changing it to something darker. The gay desire will still be there, but it’s just going to be a lot darker. This draft is just to get the story down; after which I will do another draft to deepen the characters, and then another to make the story itself stronger and more horrific/shocking, and then once more for language. This was the problem with the other story; I couldn’t get the story down and it was taking forever. (Although I am now itching to take another run at it, if you can believe that. Lord.)

And on that note I am going back to the spice mines. I need to get this place looking more ship-shape before Lisa arrives, and I have a shit ton of filing and organizing to do.

Here’s something I have always been thankful for: Calvin Klein underwear ads.

644861