Take the L (Out of Lover)

I love James M. Cain.

I think the first book of his I read was Love’s Lovely Counterfeit, which is way overdue for a reread. I also read The Postman Always Rings Twice, Double Indemnity, and Mildred Pierce back in my twenties, and in recent years read Serenade and The Butterfly. I love Cain’s work, and would read more of it, but much of it is now out of print (other than the big name novels) and hard–even ridiculously expensive–to find from second hand sellers. So, I was very excited to find out that Hard Case Crime had printed an unpublished Cain manuscript–his last novel–and finally sat down to read it this weekend.

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I first met Tom Barclay at my husband’s funeral, as he recalled to me later, though he made so little impression on me at the time that I had no recollection of ever having seen him before. Mr. Garrick, the undertaker, was in the habit of calling Student Aid, at the university, for boys to help him out, but one of those chosen that day, a junior named Dan Lacey, couldn’t come for some reason, and his father asked Tomas a favor to go in his place. Tom, though he’d graduated the year before, did the honors with me, calling for me and bringing me home in a big shiny limousine. But he rode up front with the driver, so we barely exchanged five words, and I didn’t even see what he looked like. Later, he admitted he saw what I looked like–not my face, as I was wearing a veil, but my “beautiful legs,” as he called them. If I paid no attention to him, I had other things on my mind: the shock of what had happened to Ron, the tension of facing police, and the sudden, unexpected glimpse of my sister-in-law’s scheme to steal my little boy. Ethel is Ron’s sister, and I know quite well it’s tragic that as a result of surgery she can never have a child of her own. I hope I allow for that. Still and all, it was a jolt to realize that she meant to keep my Tad. I knew she loved him, of course, when I went along with her suggestion, as we might call it, that she take him until I could ‘readjust’ and get back on my feet. But that she might love him too much, that she might want him permanently, was something I hadn’t even dreamed of.

And so begins Cain’s last novel, The Cocktail Waitress, which is quite an enjoyable read. In that first paragraph, in his terse style, he introduces not only his main character–Joan Medford, the only time Cain has ever told a story from a woman’s first person point of view–and Tom Barclay, who will be the means to her ultimate destruction. Because Cain’s novels are always about doomed people (so pointing this out doesn’t spoil the book), and how they self-destruct by making the bad choices that ultimately lead them to their ruin.

Joan, like Mildred in Mildred Pierce (one of the other Cain novels told from the point of view of a woman; although it’s third person) is dedicated to her child and completely untethered after her abusive husband’s death in a drunk driving accident. His malicious sister, Ethel–she who cannot have a child and therefore is making a play for Joan’s–keeps hinting to the police that Joan had a hand in the accident, which runs her afoul of the police from the very start. A kind policeman recommends to the young woman a job at a place called Garden of Roses–she is behind on the mortgage; the gas, phone and power have all been turned off–where she becomes a cocktail waitress and, like Mildred, now shed of a worthless husband, begins clawing her way out of the hole the husband has left her in. Joan is beautiful, sexy, and smart–but is she a reliable narrator?

And the big surprise in the book–how Joan is ultimately going to be ruined–comes near the end, and requires an understanding of American history.

Quite chilling.

I’d love to see this filmed, actually. It’s a great, meaty role for a young actress, someone like Jessica Chastain, perhaps.

I’ve now started reading Dan Chaon’s Ill Will, which is also quite exceptional.

And now, back to the spice mines.

 

Woman

I slept really well last night, yet again, which means now over a week of good, restful sleep. I’d forgotten in all the years of not-so-good sleep how addictive sleep can be; how hard it can be to come back from the wonderful, deep slumber and get back to life and reality. But I am determined to shake off the sleep and laziness today and hit my revising goals–and my cleaning goals. I started reading Cain’s The Cocktail Waitress, and I intend to get further along in it, as well.

Yesterday was a lovely day. Five months into owning a new car, and I’m still not used to it, being conditioned for so long with my clunker so that I don’t want to drive anywhere–and then I get in the new car and am all, “Oh, yes, the reason I hated driving was because I hated driving that car” and everything is right with the world again. Yesterday we drove out to Elmwood to the AMC Palace 20 theater to see Wonder Woman.

And it was, indeed, a wonder.

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While I would not refer to myself as a ‘comics geek’, as that implies a level of fandom and devotion I don’t feel I am entitled to, I do consider myself a fan. I grew up with the DC Comics titles, and periodically throughout my life I’ve dipped back into comics–I have a ridiculous amount of them in my iPad at the moment that I’ve not read yet–and I’ve always managed to try to keep up with what was going on in the worlds (universes?) of DC and Marvel; I’ve always been partial to DC because that was my childhood, but at the same time I’m impressed with Marvel and what they’ve done/accomplished over the years. I saw the Christopher Reeve Superman (and later, Superman II) in the movie theater, and yes, I did come out of them thinking that a man could fly. But as good as those two films were, and as good as Reeve was in the role, there was a bottom-line cheesiness to the movies, and some of the roles were miscast (Margot Kidder as Lois Lane was a mistake; with no offense intended to Ms. Kidder, they should have gone with Kate Jackson or Jane Seymour or Pamela Sue Martin; I never believed Kidder in the role and I never believed Superman would fall in love with her Lois Lane–and that’s not even taking into consideration the absolute lack of chemistry between Reeve and Kidder). But I did enjoy them, and was happy to see super-hero movies being made. The Superman movies eventually went off the rails–the last two Reeve-as-Superman movies were terrible, and that was, I feared, the end of that. I wasn’t crazy about the Batman movies, either; they were entertaining enough, but that film series also went off the rails completely in the last two installments. As Marvel began dipping its foot in to waters of film, I liked the Tobey Maguire Spider-Man movies, but didn’t love them; the X-Men movies were just okay (brilliant in moments, awful in others), and while I thought the reboot of Batman with Christian Bale were done really well to begin with–again, as the movies progressed they started going off the rails. I didn’t hate the rebooting of Superman with Henry Cavill as much as everyone else did; I enjoyed the movies, thought he did a fine job in the role, and even Ben Affleck, whose casting as Batman in the new world of the DC Cinematic Universe was, to me, questionable, kind of pulled it off in Batman vs. Superman. I also enjoyed Deadpool and Guardians of the Galaxy, and loved Chris Hemsworth as Thor, but the movie overall itself was just kind of meh. (I’ve not seen the other Thor movies, so can’t judge them.) The Iron Man movies I’ve seen were enjoyable, but not memorable.

But all the movies made money, which is all that matters in Hollywood, no matter what kind of critical roasting they get, and so we were bound to get more of these movies. When they announced who would be playing characters I’ve known and loved since childhood for the  Justice League movie, I wasn’t so sure–I didn’t know who either Gal Gadot and Ezra Miller were, and while I love Jason Momoa (who doesn’t?), I wasn’t so sure about him playing Aquaman. But the brief scenes in which Gadot appeared in Batman v. Superman were luminous, and that gave me hope. I really, really wanted Wonder Woman to be a great movie, because I love the character so much (and always have), and the previews looked pretty damned spectacular. Already people were posting on social media about how much they enjoyed the movie, so that was good–but I was still a bit nervous about it when we took our seats in the IMAX 3-D theater in Elmwood.

Two and a half hours later we walked out of the theater, stunned.

Not only did it exceed my expectations, but it was a great movie, from beginning to end. Origin stories are extremely hard to tell and make interesting, but we get to see young Diana as the only child on Themyscira (which was indeed a Paradise Island), and Connie Nielson was terrific as Queen Hippolyta–although Robin Wright as her sister Antiope stole every scene she was in–who knew The Princess Bride could be such a badass? (Robin Wright has always been under-appreciated as an actress–from her beginnings as Kelly Capwell on the soap Santa Barbara and The Princess Bride–and I’ve always believed she gave the strongest performance in Forrest Gump and should have at least gotten an Oscar nomination as Jenny) Chris Pine is, of course, thoroughly appealing as Steve Trevor–everyone in the cast was superb–but the true success of the movie lies completely in the hands of Gal Gadot.

And she was amazing, absolutely amazing. From her first glimpse of London to seeing an actual baby for the first time to trying to figure out how to get through a revolving door to her first taste of ice cream, she managed to capture Diana’s innocence and naivete without coming across as an idiot–and that is not an easy thing to do. She inhabited the role perfectly, and the film was not shot to sexualize her or make her an object of lust–and that is all due to the superb direction of Patty Jenkins, who should be put in charge of the DC Cinematic Universe. The action/battle sequences never got boring–as they tend to do in most super-hero movies–and there were moments when I got goosebumps and tears in my eyes–the scene where she emerges from the trench at the battlefield in her uniform for the first time affected me so deeply I wanted to stand up and cheer in the theater, but settled for teary eyes and goosebumps. There were many of those moments in this movie.

I think what gets lost, what was missing, in earlier super-hero movies (and most especially in the recent two Superman outings) is that the heroes themselves are symbols of hope, and that they themselves believe in the ultimate goodness of humanity; and they have an innate sense of nobility. That’s the piece that was missing from the Superman movies; that, and the sense of fun. Wonder Woman delivered on both counts, in spades.

There hasn’t been a single super-hero film I’ve seen since the 1970’s that I would be excited to watch again on television, let alone go see in the theater again.

I would go see Wonder Woman again in the theater.

I can’t think of any praise higher than that.

Well done, DC, and everyone involved in this film. Bravo.

(I’ve Been) Searchin’ So Long

Saturday morning. After my morning coffee,  I’m going to run some errands, and then I am going to figure out what time to drive out to Elmwood to see Wonder Woman–shooting for late afternoon/early evening; that way I can get some cleaning and revising done. I’ve not done much revising this week–which is shameful (there is some harsh and ugly truths there about the need for actual contractual deadlines, isn’t there?), and so my goal is to get back on track with all of that for this weekend. I want to get another three or four chapters revised, as well as the second draft of “Quiet Desperation” finished this weekend, so I can move on to revising another short story. I’ve also started a new draft of the eighth Scotty novel, Crescent City Charade, which I am hoping to get finished by the end of the summer (Labor Day is the goal). I absolutely HAVE to get these revisions finished by the end of June, because I want to spend the summer querying agents. I honestly believe this WIP is my best work, and could be an important book.

Whether that proves to be the case or not remains to be seen, of course, but here’s hoping.

The Lost Apartment is a mess, and has been for quite some time. I can’t remember the last time I did the floors, quite frankly, and it’s getting kind of ugly down there, honestly. I mean, our kitchen floor needs to be redone–tiles have come up–which kind of makes it hard to make it look nice anyway, but that’s no excuse for not cleaning, you know? My mother would be so ashamed.

So ashamed.

So, I am going to, as soon as I finish this cup of coffee, start straightening and cleaning up down here. It looks like it’s going to rain all weekend, so I am not going to bother with the windows (which are also long overdue for a cleaning; although I could do the inside. Hmmmm, that could be a plan, actually) and definitely work on these floors. There’s some filing to do–isn’t there always–and some other organizing I need to do, but if I buckle down and stay focused (and make a fucking list) I should be able to get through everything before it’s time to go see Wonder Woman.

I’m really looking forward to seeing the movie. Wonder Woman was always one of my favorite comic book superheroes (although when I started reading DC Comics, she’d given up her powers somehow and was running a clothing boutique and dealing with social issues and was a modern feminist; in retrospect, it was one of the stupidest reboots in DC’s long history of rebooting their characters); I loved the historic Amazon character, and the rebooted non-powered Wonder Woman/Diana Prince character was more of a detective, solving crimes and trained in martial arts. Around the time the television series starring Lynda Carter started, the DC rebooted her again and made her an Amazon princess with her powers again. And the TV show was amazing. Rewatching it now shows it up for its low-budget special effects and bad writing, but Lynda Carter embodied the part so beautifully that she became iconic–and I’ve been a lifelong fan of Ms. Carter. Paul and I stopped watching Supergirl during its first season, before Lynda Carter joined the cast as the president, so I’m sure at some point I’ll go back and binge the series. (I’ve also always been a fan of Supergirl–who also went through an incredibly stupid reboot in the 1970’s; complete with new costumes and a loss of some of her powers–sometimes she had them, sometimes she didn’t; they came and went because of some kind of Kryptonite poisoned drink she was tricked into imbibing; then was killed off during the Crisis on Infinite Earths, and then was brought back as something completely different after Superman was killed off in the early 1990’s. It’s really hard to keep track of all these shifts and changes in DC continuity/universes.)

Interestingly enough, now as I reflect on my fandom of both Wonder Woman and Supergirl, I realize how I’ve always been drawn to fictional depictions of strong women–from Nancy Drew to Trixie Belden to the Dana Girls to Cherry Ames to Vicki Barr to Wonder Woman to Supergirl to Lois Lane (who used to have her own comic book, detailing her adventures as an investigative reporter, which I also loved), to real life women who defied the traditional role of women in our society, like Katharine Hepburn and Bette Davis and Joan Crawford. I’ve certainly always enjoyed reading fiction by and about women; from Charlotte Armstrong to Phyllis Whitney to Victoria Holt to Mary Stewart to Judith Krantz and so on and so forth. Do people still read Rona Jaffe? She was another favorite of mine from the 1970’s. Taylor Caldwell, Evelyn Anthony, Jean Plaidy, Helen MacInnes, Daphne du Maurier, Patricia Highsmith, Shirley Jackson–I’ve always read and enjoyed books written by women. (This is not to say I don’t enjoy books by men; I always have, but at the same time there is a certain style of testosterone driven male novel, complete with angst, that I simply cannot abide, and the crime genre is riddled with them. I recently joked that I wanted to write a noir set in the strip clubs in the Quarter and call it Girls Girls Girls…you get the idea.)

And there are so many wonderful women writers publishing today: Sara Paretsky, Laura Lippman, Sue Grafton, Megan Abbott, Alison Gaylin, Alafair Burke, Alex Marwood, Lisa Unger, Jamie Mason, Wendy Corsi Staub, J. M. Redmann, Kristi Belcamino, Carrie Smith, Sara Henry, Ellen Hart, Donna Andrews, Dana Cameron, Toni Kelner (Leigh Perry), Carolyn Haines, Catriona McPherson, Lori Rader-Day, and Rebecca Chance–just off the top of my head; my TBR pile is filled with books by women, and there are so many wonderful women writers I’ve not gotten to yet, like Lisa Lutz and Shannon Baker and Jennifer MacMahon and Karin Slaughter–the list goes on and on forever and ever, amen. And this is just crime fiction/thrillers…I’ve not even touched on horror or scifi or fantasy or so-called ‘chick-lit.’ (Which reminds me, I really want to read some more Liane Moriarty, and I’ve not read any Jennifer Weiner…sigh.)

There’s just never enough time….and speaking of which, it’s time for me to head back into the spice mines.

Here’s a Saturday hunk for you:

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Holding Out for a Hero

I finished reading The Sympathizer last night, and really enjoyed it. Calling it a crime novel is a bit of a stretch, but an argument can be made for it, and I can see either side of the argument, frankly. As I said before, it was interesting to read about the Vietnam War from the perspective of an actual Vietnamese-American, and I feel like Viet Thanh Nguyen did a really excellent job of showing how one could become a Communist back in the days when the small country was torn to shreds by war; and wind up playing a double–sometimes triple–game. I have Nguyen’s short story collection The Refugees; I am looking forward to reading some of his short fiction. And I have landed on James M. Cain’s The Cocktail Waitress as my next read. I am rather excited about it, as I love Cain.

I was in a mood yesterday; not really sure what triggered it, but am more than willing to blame it on heavy weather. It’s pretty much been raining every day and night this week; today I can see sunshine outside my windows through the condensation, and as such the humidity has been unbearable and that does affect me, even when I take a Claritin, as I did yesterday. I got home last night and we watched this week’s episode of The Handmaid’s Tale, which gets more and more viscerally disturbing from week to week. It’s very hard to watch–I can’t imagine how women watch it, frankly–and sometimes so much so that I pick up my phone and scroll through Twitter and Facebook until I can look at the television again. I’ve not read a lot of dystopian fiction, nor seen a lot of dystopian films (I’ve never read nor watched The Hunger Games, or any of the really popular young adult dystopian novels, outside of Chuck Wendig’s Under the Empyrean Sky, and I never read the other two books in that trilogy), pretty much limiting myself to Stephen King’s The Stand, and the Mad Max Beyond Thunderdome film (I’ve not watched any of the other Mad Max movies), and Harlan Ellison’s story “A Boy and His Dog”, along with the film. I’ve had, over the years, ideas for dystopian fiction novels of my own–I am often influenced by books, movies, and television programs that I enjoy; so after watching Thunderdome and reading “A Boy and His Dog” in a short period of time, my mind naturally moved to an idea for a book/story about a dystopian future where a young woman is competing in a cross country car race, across the blighted wreckage of the Great Plains (which sounds kind of Hunger Games-ish, doesn’t it?), which I called “Fox on the Run”–the drivers are called ‘foxes’ and the people trying to catch and wreck them, take them out of the race, are called “hounds”–which I’ve toyed with over the years but never did anything with. In the early 1990’s, I came up with another dystopian idea, in which fundamentalists have taken over the US government, the country had splintered into pieces, some of them at war with each other, and how the fundamentalists have started rounding up ‘indesirables’–gays, lesbians, transgender, mixed race, etc.–and putting them in ‘work camps,’ but there’s an ‘underground railroad’ of sorts to help the undesirables get out. That one was called There Comes a Tide, which was a direct result of the horror of the AIDS epidemic and the callous federal response to it. When hysterics–and this was actually happening, for those of you who don’t remember or weren’t there–were calling for quarantining gay men (and just how and when and where? Yup, concentration camps), it wasn’t hard to imagine that such a thing could actually happen. (That time was so scary, and so incredibly frustrating.) I also have yet another idea, one I’ve actually started writing, but haven’t gotten far with, and over time I’ve come to realize there’s a way to link all these stories together into a trilogy…but not sure I am the right person to write such a trilogy.

But it’s something I think about, from time to time–usually when I am trying not to work on whatever I am currently working on, which is when I usually get my best ideas for other projects, natch. Isn’t that always the way? So, of course, as I work on the revisions, all I can think about is the next Scotty book–and once I actually start writing THAT, I’ll start thinking about something else. I would love to get Crescent City Charade finished by the end of the summer, so I could go on to write Muscles this fall…but we’ll see how everything shakes out.

I’m absolutely delighted that today is Friday, of course. I am hoping to get to see Wonder Woman this weekend; if Paul doesn’t want to go I may just go by myself. On the other hand, maybe I should use that as a reward: if I get as far as I would like to in my revisions, I can go see Wonder Woman.

Hmmm.

Okay, back to the spice mines.

Here’s a Friday hunk to get your weekend started:

troy baker

 

Reelin’ in the Years

It’s raining again on this first morning of June; gray and slick and wet outside my condensation-veiled windows as I sip my second cup of coffee. It’s Thursday; there’s only tomorrow to get through before the weekend, and I still am feeling a bit off, as I often do during short work weeks. But I am still feeling rested and like I am getting good sleep, even if I am not sleeping all the way through the night–I wake up once or twice, but am able to fall back asleep, which is a lovely change. (Plus, every morning around five Scooter turns into a purr machine, along with the kneading with claws extended. Sigh.)

We finished watching London Spy last night, and wow, absolutely amazing how that went completely off the rails in the final two episodes. I was enormously disappointed, obviously. The show had such an amazing premise, and would have worked beautifully had they simply put as much thought into how to end it as they did in how to set up the premise. And there were so many wonderful, brilliant options! I will still chalk the show up as a win on several levels: 1. Beautifully realized, realistic gay characters; 2. Probably the most honest approach to gay sexuality I’ve seen in any film or television series, or at least one of the most honest; 3. An excellent, absolutely powerful depiction of what it is like to get an HIV test; 4. Excellent job of taking a crime trope–innocent person caught up in something far beyond their scope to deal with, including the inability to trust anyone while caught in a trap which includes rabid paranoia. It went off the rails, alas, and became completely unbelievable in its final two episodes, which is a pity.

But at least they tried, which is more than I can say for most television/film/production companies.

And remember–twenty years ago such a show would have been unfathomable. Twenty years ago we were embracing horrible Hollywood films like Philadelphia and To Wong Foo, Thanks for Everything, Julie Newmar,  which had queer characters (although Wong Foo’s drag queens, with the exception of John Leguizamo’s Chi Chi, were completely sexless; no lust or love or even desire for Patrick Swayze and Wesley Snipes!) which was something we could embrace, but both films had that false Hollywood veneer that rendered them inauthentic and castrated. (Don’t even get me started on In and Out.) Then again, it’s not like Hollywood is exactly churning out films with queer characters front and center, unless someone (straight) is gunning for an Oscar.

Ah, well.

Not sure what we’re going to watch next; either The Night Manager or The Magicians, most likely.

And now, back to revising.

For Throwback Thursday, here’s gorgeous young Richard Chamberlain.

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Deacon Blues

Hump day. I am trying to adjust to being rested; I had no idea before how tired I was all the time. This new sleep-assisting pillow spray is da bomb, yo. I’ve not yet reached the point where I am brave enough to try to sleep only using the pillow spray as an aid, but the day when I am going to try it is rapidly approaching. I’ve been weaning myself off everything else gradually–last night I only took melatonin, which would have never been enough to help me sleep before–and only woke up twice, but was able to fall back asleep without a problem within a matter of minutes.

Game changer, seriously.

The problem with short weeks after three day holiday weekends, for me at least, is readjusting. I keep thinking it’s Tuesday, for example, but it’s not, and this is sort of one of those things like trying to adjust to walking on dry land again after being at sea for a while; something just seems off. I need to get some revising done this week; I am due for the final read-through of a pseudonymous manuscript after final edit, which has to be turned quickly–in less than twenty-four hours–so I don’t want to get myself too wound up going into that, because I will need to focus in order to get it finished on time so we can get the production of the book back on schedule (and yes, I turned the manuscript in late…this is what happens, people, when you turn your work in late: you fuck up the production schedule.) Heavy sigh.

We watched another episode of London Spy last night, which is amazing. (Bar testing was canceled.) It’s just so smart about being gay; I need to look up to see if the writers/producers are gay because if they aren’t, they did an amazing job about dealing with and looking at not just gay life, but gay sexuality: the scene where Danny tells Alex’s mother that ‘you can’t fake being a virgin’ was so fucking spot-on I almost gave it a standing ovation. Last night’s episode had probably the most horrifying–and accurate–depiction of getting an HIV test and having it come back reactive that I’ve ever seen; particularly when you know you’ve been safe, not been at rest, and your test comes back reactive. (They used an INSTI test, which is our back-up test at the day job–although I called shenanigans on some of the things in the scene–but then, the London protocol for HIV testing could simply be different than ours in Louisiana; though I find it really odd that ours would be more stringent than London’s…)

Okay, I should probably get back to the spice mines. Spice, after all, will not mine itself.

Today’s Hump Day Hunk is fitness trainer/model Danny Jones–whom I discovered randomly yesterday by scrolling thru Instagram.

danny jones underwear

Set the Night to Music

It rained all night; a wonderful downpour punctuated with lightning and rolling thunder that seemed to last forever. This morning everything is still gray outside, the windows covered with condensation and everything outside slick and dripping. It’s a short work week, and I don’t even have to go in until later this afternoon; I am bar testing tonight. I have some errands to run this morning, and also some things to do around the house that I kind of blew off and didn’t do over the course of the three day weekend, which is sort of shameful but I refuse to feel guilty about. I feel very well-rested this morning, and that really was the point of the weekend; the most important thing was for me to feel rested again once it was time to return to the office.

So, over all, the weekend was a win. I didn’t finish reading The Sympathizer, but have only a hundred or so pages left to read. I am really enjoying it. We finished watching Sherlock last night, got caught up with Veep, and then moved on to London Spy, which we are also enjoying; it’s nothing like I expected. I kind of knew the premise; everyone on Facebook was talking about it when it was originally airing, and of course, lots of people told me I should watch it–gay main character, gay romance at the heart of the story, and a mystery the main character has to solve. We’re two episodes in, and I have to say I am rather pleased with how it’s depicting Danny, the main character. It’s very Hitchcockian in that the main character is just an ordinary guy who gets caught up in something beyond his scope quite by accident; which is also something I rather enjoy. I’m looking forward to getting further into it–alas, tonight I have to work late, but there’s always tomorrow. (It also got me thinking about Colin, and what I kind of want to do with the next Scotty book.)

And before I run my errands and get things done around the Lost Apartment, I am going to get through some work on the WIP as well.

It is very lovely to feel rested.

And on that note, it’s time to get back to the spice mines.

Here’s a hunk to get you into your week.

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All I Need

I had a lovely, relaxing day yesterday of reading and cleaning, capped up with watching three more episodes of Sherlock; tonight we will finish that off and hopefully, there will be a new Veep to watch, else we’ll have to find something else. I am greatly enjoying The Sympathizer, am almost halfway finished with it so probably will get it finished today, which will then beg the question of what to read next. I’m leaning towards James M. Cain’s The Cocktail Waitress…but there are any number of other books in the running as well. The riches contained within  my TBR pile are simply mind-boggling; and it’s continuing to grow exponentially. Heavy heaving sigh. I also want to start doing some re-organizing of the storage attic today; that, along with some work on the WIP as well as some more cleaning around the Lost Apartment will probably account for most of my day. Paul will undoubtedly watch some of the French Open, and around mid-afternoon I will cook out for our late lunch/early dinner.

Another exciting day in New Orleans.

It feels really good to be so well-rested; and tomorrow is a late night at work for more–bar testing, so I don’t even have to go in until later, pretty much freeing up my entire day to get some more cleaning and organizing and writing done before I head to the office. I rather do think that three day weekends are much better than regular ones; the extra day off is really lovely. I wish there was a way I could rearrange my schedule to work four ten hour days and take a three day weekend every weekend….but that’s just not possible, alas. It would be lovely, though, wouldn’t it?

At least this will be a short work week.

The Sympathizer is, while a bit hard to get into at first, quite compelling. The first book to win both an Edgar (Best First Novel) and the Pulitzer Prize, it’s also the first time I’ve read about Vietnam from the perspective of a Vietnamese–which is certainly rather American of me, isn’t it? Everything I’ve read about Vietnam has been from the perspective of Westerners–from Graham Greene’s The Quiet American through Philip Caputo’s A Rumor of War; and certainly the Western/white gaze has been pretty aptly explored on film and television (I should rewatch China Beach again); but this view, from a character who is not only Vietnamese, but a Viet Cong undercover operative implanted in the staff of a South Vietnamese general–to the point of also evacuating and spying on the refugee community in Southern California–is quite interesting. (I also have a copy of Vu Tran’s Dragonfish, which I am looking forward to reading.) I had an idea for a noir centered around a young man of Vietnamese/American mixed heritage, set in a small town on either the Gulf Coast of Alabama or Florida–writing this would require a LOT of research, obviously–but I think it could be interesting, and certainly would be fun to write.

But I need to get this revision done by the end of June, so I can spend the rest of the summer writing the next Scotty book.

Heavy heaving sigh.

And on that note, back to the spice mines.

Here’s a Memorial Day hunk for you.

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One Less Bell to Answer

Last night was the best night of sleep I’ve had in at least a week; I slept for nearly ten hours, uninterrupted and deeply. This morning I do not feel groggy or like I need to go back to sleep at any time soon; which is an absolutely lovely feeling. I was very tired yesterday–the gym, errands in the heat, a week of feeling groggy and unrested–and also in the mail yesterday I received a bottle of pillow spray from a company called ThisWorks: a pillow spray that the posher airlines pass out to their first class cabin travelers to help them sleep. I sprayed my pillow lightly with it last night before i took to my bed, and along with my usual sleep assistants I slumbered deeply and well. Today, I feel like I can conquer the world, which is a wonderful feeling I’ve not had in a very long time.

Much to our surprise, we discovered last night that we’d forgotten about the BBC series Sherlock and there were actually two seasons (‘series,’ as they say in Britain) of the show we’d not seen; so we snuggled in our respective seats and started watching. I’d forgotten how much I love the series, due in no small part to the excellent casting. I read the Holmes stories when I was a kid–there was a Whitman edition of The Hound of the Baskervilles I’d purchased for eighty-nine cents and it was shelved with the Trixie Beldens; Holmes is so much a part of the popular culture that I of course knew who he was, and as a fan of mysteries, I felt it behooved me to read the Holmes stories. I wasn’t completely taken with them, although I enjoyed them–although it does occur to me that I may want to give them a reread–there’s an entire group of crime writers/fans who are quite literally obsessed with Holmes and Watson, and of course the terrific Laurie King has written her own tales, from the point of view of Mary Russell–and the awesome Lyndsay Faye has as well (I really need to read both King and Faye; I love King’s Kate Martinelli series, and Lyndsay is one of my favorite people on the planet).

So many books, so little time.

I was so tired yesterday that I didn’t get as much cleaning done as I would like, so I am going to try to do that today around some revising and rewriting. I am itching to get to the WIP, and to possibly finish “Quiet Desperation” and send it out into the world. My goal is to get the revision of the WIP finished by the end of June as well as to get at least three short stories finished in that same amount of time; that’s quite a lot of work, but I also know I can do it. I also want to get more reading done. Reading is crucial to being a writer; I am always amazed at aspiring writers who claim they don’t read. A love of reading, at least for me, is integral to my wanting to be a writer in the first place; I love books, and everything about them. (Which reminds me, I need to get a library card.)

Also on the agenda for this weekend (probably tomorrow) is reading the manual for my car and teaching myself how to use all of its tricks. I’ve slowly figured out some of them, but it seems silly to have a car that has functions I don’t use because I don’t know how to when all I have to do is read the damned manual and then sit in the car and go over them all. Heavy sigh. I even forgot–until I got the manual out of the glove box yesterday–that the car has a CD player (seeing the CD’s in the glovebox–both by Fleetwood Mac–reminded me).

And on that note, it’s back to the spice mines with me.

Here’s a Sunday hunk for you.

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Big Yellow Taxi

Christ, it’s hot. I think this is the first day so far this year where it’s been hotter than ninety degrees and humid, and yes, in case you’re wondering, it’s miserable outside. I had Wacky Russian this morning, then ran to the post office, the grocery store, and Costco. So, I am both exhausted and drenched in sweat. I just ordered our weekend treat–a Chicago-style deep dish pizza from That’s Amore–and if I didn’t have to walk to pick it up and bring it home, I would be in the shower right now. As there’s no point to taking one now when I am just going to get sweaty all over again, I am holding off.

But I am miserable, even in the air conditioned comfort of The Lost Apartment, as am still wet and sticky. Blech. But…that pizza is going to taste amazing, and then I can take a long, hot shower…then repair to my easy chair with The Sympathizer and some fizzy water. We finished watching The Keepers last night (color me unimpressed; there was such obvious editorial manipulation–which, of course, is always necessary in a documentary, but this was so blatant that it was noticeable, and it raised some questions that it never even addressed), and now will have to find something to watch tonight. I cruised through Netflix, Hulu, and Prime before the gym this morning, and while I did find some things of interest, overall nothing that was oh, I can’t wait to watch this!

Ah, well, we can always rent movies from iTunes, I suppose.

As I was cruising around New Orleans this hot, muggy afternoon, my mind went back to the stalled Scotty book and I realized that, once again, what I was doing wrong was trying to force the original story into the Scotty book. I thought I had figured that out already, and I did to a degree, but it occurred to me that part of what I feel was missing from the series since Katrina can easily be remedied, and if I go back to Scotty’s roots, the book will be that much easier to write. I imagined an opening scene with Scotty having lunch with his sister, Rain, at her house–which we finally saw in Baton Rouge Bingo–and thought it made sense to delve into the family again. As Rain is friends with some of the ‘Grande Dames of New Orleans’, it only makes sense, plus it gives me an opportunity to get Taylor into the story as well. I also need to figure out a way to get Scotty’s parents into the story, and it’s been far too long since there’s been one of these where Frank and Colin both were present–I had developed a  very bad habit of sending Colin off on missions and sending Frank away for wrestling tours so Scotty was all alone–and I want this book to be longer than the others, as well. I want to really get deep into it, in a way I feel I haven’t since Mardi Gras Mambo. 

On the other hand, maybe I’m not the best judge of this. After all, Katrina kind of intervened, and that changed the way I look at things…so it’s not beyond the realm of possibility that’s what’s going on here.

Heavy heaving sigh.

The revision of the WIP is also going well; I am very excited.

Oops! Time to go get the pizza.

Here’s a hunk for you, Constant Reader.

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