Who Are You?

TRIGGER WARNING: Racism, homophobia, and archaic racist terms.

I learned long ago that the best way to deal with assholes was to develop a razor-sharp quick wit. I don’t know how I trained myself to be snarky and fast with my sense of humor, but at some point in my teens—in college, I think—I realized that not being filtered, and not being able to recognize most social cues, could actually prove to be a powerful defensive tool, if controlled. It has worked marvelously for me ever since. I also learned that a really good thing to do was say things to people I disliked that could be taken as either a compliment or shade, leaving it up to them to decide what I meant.

A few years ago, I had an experience at Left Coast Crime in Albuquerque where my usual biting sense of humor deserted me when I really needed it the most. I’ve grown used to dealing with homophobes and contemptuously cutting them off at the knees; I even relish doing it at times. But this? I’d never dealt with this kind of bigotry before, and my only excuse is that I was caught completely off-guard. I’ve also turned what happened over and over again in my mind in the time since, wondering how I should feel about it. It still hasn’t finished processing yet, and I’ll probably keep processing it for a few more years.

This was my first (and so far, only) time attending Left Coast Crime (unrelated; I want to go again but it just hasn’t worked out). I had always heard wonderful things about it, but the timing was always difficult for me to actually attend; all too frequently it is around the time of the Festivals here. I’d come home to the locks changed, methinks, were I to go away at that time.

At the time, I was still serving as Executive Vice-President of Mystery Writers of America. It was 2021, we hadn’t had any kind of crime publishing events since March 2020, and the events were just starting to slowly to come back. MWA had signed on to sponsor the Lefty banquet, and I felt someone should be there to rep the org at the event, and it wound up being me. I felt a bit uncomfortable about registering and agreeing to do panels; we were a sponsor, and I didn’t want Programming to feel pressured to give me anything because of that (I tried very hard not to use the position to promote myself; I may have been a bit over-zealous on that score, but better safe than sorry). I arrived in Albuquerque on Thursday, had a quiet dinner with a friend, and the next day I went to panels, ran into people, and had a lovely time. I also had dinner plans for Friday that I was excited about–I was having dinner with Marco Carocari, whom I had just met at Saints and Sinners; John Copenhaver, whom I was starting to get to know better; Oline Cogdill, a dear friend of well over a decade; Mia Manansala, whom I met at New Orleans Bouchercon before she was published and I’ve always felt a bit protective of her (my neuroses, not hers) and someone new to me–Wanda Morris, whom I had neither read nor met before.1

Constant Reader, that was such a fun dinner, the kind I always dreamed of being a part of when I was that lonely kid in Kansas wondering what his future would be. We talked about books, writing, gossip, and I believe everyone, other than Oline and I, was up for a Lefty. We toasted their nominations, and when we headed back to the hotel I felt marvelous; giddy almost. I was having a good time and was excited to be around writers again, and I wanted it to keep going. I didn’t want the evening to end…

Little did I know what I was in for as we walked back into the hotel lobby, and we three gays decided to go have a drink at the bar, while the women wisely all went up to bed.

It started with a chair.

So innocuous, so nothing, just a little thing that happens in hotel bars all the time; you join a table without enough chairs so you grab a free one from the next table…but this time? Very different.

Basically, we had decided to join friends at a high-top table with room for eight, with all the chairs already taken and some others pulled up. There was a tall bar chair standing at the next table–a low table, so it didn’t really belong there in the first place–and several people were sitting around that table. I smiled, said, “is anyone using this?” and one of the three people shook their head no, so I took the chair…which bothered the woman who was sitting closest to me and who decided, in her inebriation, that I shouldn’t have the chair.

DRUNK WHITE WOMAN (Henceforth, DWW): You can’t take that chair because you have to sit here and talk to me.

I’d never seen her before in my life, but I’ve also been drunk in public before, so I just smiled as I sat down at the other table, and said politely, with no idea of what I was letting myself in for: “Can’t you talk to me if I sit here?”

DWW: Great!

I nodded to her, hoping that was the end of the interaction. I’d had two drinks at dinner, but wasn’t even slightly buzzed. I had a glass of Pinot Grigio in my clutches, I’d had a marvelous evening already, and I was looking forward to catching up with the others at the table. I started to turn back to the table to talk to my friends, when…she leaned towards me, narrowing her eyes, and saying, in a very low tone, “Are you a mulatto?”2

Needless to say, I was taken aback–not by the assumption, but the language.

I literally thought, are we really still using that word in this year of our Lord 2022?

I didn’t know what to say, I was so stunned and shocked that my ability to lobby back an icy, conversation ending retort, something of which I was so so proud, had deserted me. I just smiled and said, “no,” which she countered with a scoff, “Well, you’re at least a quadroon.3“

And rubbed each side of her nose with an index finger, adding with a knowing smirk, “Especially with that nose.”

I said, rather sharply, “I know who all my grandparents were, so no.”

Again, it wasn’t the racial profiling that bothered me, but it was the entitlement and the language she was using.

First and foremost, my racial heritage–anyone’s, really–is no one’s business.

She was being racist to me, but even as I floundered, I couldn’t figure out why I was so flustered and having trouble figuring out what to say next. It didn’t bother me in the least that she thought I was part Black (more on that later), but she was using racist language to inquire, which I was offended by, and I was more than a little insulted by her condescending assumption that I’d lie about it? And again, what business was it of hers if I was or wasn’t? (I’m still not sure how to wrap my mind around this; two years later I am blogging about it in order to process it in my brain.)

AND WHAT IF I ACTUALLY WERE?

And then, finally:

DWW: Where are you from?

ME: New Orleans4.

DWW: (waving her hand, poo-pooing me) Oh, everyone’s mixed there.

Hoping this ordeal was over and still in shock, I turned back to my friends…only to hear her voice loudly asking me, “Are you gay?” I confirmed that yes, I was–and then she went on a long, incredibly tiresome (and repetitive) monologue about how she’s always been good with the “L and the G and the B and the T”, tried bonding with me over hot male asses (in horrific terms: think locker room talk), and just kept on until finally I was able to finally excuse myself. I got up and left my friends, never to return. Definitely made me uncomfortable, so yeah, it also counts as sexual harassment–what I do or don’t do in my bedroom, DWW, is none of your fucking business.

I still can’t believe that happened, that someone felt comfortable using that kind of language to, and about, me about my racial heritage (when I was a child in the 1960’s I knew you don’t use those words, and they usually only appeared in old racist books, like Gone with the Wind), not to mention trying to get into my bedroom and what I do there. It’s not okay for anyone to use those horrible, archaic old terms that were humiliating and degrading even when they were in common use…and I also felt like I’d failed. I should have stopped her, I should have called her out for using racist and homophobic language, not to mention the fact that she felt, in her drunken stupor, perfectly okay to treat me not as a person but as a thing.

That is the real shame I feel. Not that she used such language to me, but I allowed it. I have to do better than that. My silence was complicity.

And yes, I should have filed a complaint with the conference. I’m still ashamed that I didn’t correct her or say anything before I made my escape. But I sensed it also wouldn’t do any good. Alcohol brings your barriers down, after all.

It also wasn’t the first time this has happened–but at least the first time, it wasn’t so offensive.

This, for an illustration, was my second author photo.

Taken by Sylvester Q, a photographer in New York, he also loaned me the shirt and some other clothes for the shoot. It was my first professional author photo shoot, and this was the best image, in my opinion, to come out of the session. I used it for Jackson Square Jazz (when I got the book down to reread it for the new edit for the 20-year anniversary edition, I noticed the picture) and for several other books. I don’t remember which image I used to replace this one–I think it’s the black and white one of me sitting and hugging my knees–but I am very well aware that I need new author photos. The one I just referenced was taken in either 2008 or 2009; the one of me with my stack of books is from around 2013 or 2014 (and yes, old age has hit me very hard since those last ones were taken). I did a shoot at Sleuthfest with Morgan Sophia in the summer of 2022; the pictures look like me but I don’t like the way I look in them, so I’ve not really used them.

Anyway, this was the image I provided to the Louisiana Book Festival when I was on a New Orleans Noir panel for their program in 2007 (I think). I don’t remember everyone else that was on it, other than editor/moderator Julie Smith and the person I am about to mention.

I was a little taken aback when said contributor sat down next to me, and exclaimed after we were officially introduced, “But I thought you were Black!”

She’d only seen my photograph in the program.

I was more amused than anything else, and perplexed. But when I looked at my image in the program later, it had printed even darker than the image above, which was already pretty dark. I think it had to do with how the shot was lit more than anything else. It was kind of funny, and it became a story that I told sometimes over drinks.

That wasn’t the first time my genetic heritage has been questioned by someone.

White people have this strange curiosity thing about people’s backgrounds, always trying to figure out where you’re from. “Are you German?” “Are you Italian?” That sort of thing. I will comment on a name–“oh, is that French/Spanish/German etc.”–but I would never ask anyone what are you?

I’d never really thought about it before the LCC incident, but people have very often wondered–and asked–what I am.

And in all honesty, I’ve never liked being asked, mainly because I wasn’t entirely sure.

I guess I am what is I’ve sometimes seen referred to as “ethnically ambiguous5“; in other words, had I been a movie star in Hollywood back in the golden age I probably would have been cast in roles that today would be considered offensive for me to play. People have often–again, this weird thing white people have about trying to figure out “what” I am–taken me for everything from Greek to Italian to indigenous to Syrian to Persian to Latino. I’ve never given it much thought, and I don’t really see it. My skin tone is what is called olive, and I’ve always tanned easily, a very dark brown with some red mixed into it (I’ve only been sunburned twice in my life). My facial features are a curious mix of my family; I look like both my parents, and my nose was broken in high school, with the cartilage never reattaching to the bone. I also shave my head, which apparently adds to the confusion.

Almost all of the ancestors (that I’m aware of, but I only know my father’s side, and there’s not anyone left on Mom’s side who’d know more) were British (Scots, Irish, English and possibly some Welsh) but white people have this weird need to classify people. I don’t know if it’s an American thing, or what, but it happens. Not so much anymore as it used to–maybe people are finally starting to realize that it’s offensive or that it doesn’t matter or some combination of the two.

But still. Basically, the woman in Albuquerque othered me. She looked at me and was confused, so she just had to find out what I was.

What I am. “What ARE you?”

And for the record, what happened to me at Left Coast is the kind of horrifically racist and offensive behavior that racialized people have to deal with multiple times every damned day. In some ways I’m glad it happened; that I got to experience racism targeted directly at me, but at the same time…it shouldn’t happen. To anyone, regardless of who they are or how they identify. It also made me very aware of my own privilege, which is something I do need a reminder about periodically; I get so wrapped up in being marginalized as a gay man that I forget how horrible it is to be a person of color in this racialized country and society and culture.

And ultimately, white people? It’s really none of your fucking business in the first place!

And would people have considered me white in the antebellum South? is a question we might have to revisit at another time.

Part of the struggle in writing this all down and sharing it with you, Constant Reader, comes from not wanting to make myself seem like either a martyr or center the conversation about racist bigotry on me. Unsettling as this all was–the privilege on display, the language used, the shame in not putting her in her place–it was momentary, something that didn’t impact or effect my life in any way; another anecdote for cocktail parties or dinner conversation. The sexual harassment aspect of it, had that been all there was (oh yes, during the ass conversation she also talked about mine), would have merely been something I would have laughed about with friends later, but the racial component was horrible. All I could think about was, really, how lucky she was that I wasn’t biracial.

Which makes me squirm more for not reporting it to the conference–what if she does this to authors or readers of color at one of these events? Was I coward for not only not stopping her but not reporting her? It’s been two years now, and I still am not entirely sure what I think or feel about this, which is very unusual for me; it’s very rare that I am unsettled this way.

But putting it all down has helped somewhat. I probably should have written this years ago.

  1. I did buy her book that weekend, and once I read it became a fan. ↩︎
  2. If you aren’t aware of this word, it’s an old, ugly, and pejorative term used for biracial people during the human trafficking era and the Jim Crow time that came after it. I’ve not heard anyone say the word aloud in at least fifty or so years. AT LEAST. If you want to understand just how offensive it is, it’s root word is mule–the product of interspecies breeding. Go fuck yourself, you horrible racist. ↩︎
  3. Again an archaic deeply problematic word that actually comes from antebellum New Orleans, indicating how much Black blood someone had. These were the days of the “one drop” rule, which meant any Black ancestry, no matter how remote, made you Black in the eyes of the state and the law. Quadroon means one quarter, so the person had a single Black grandparent, the “roon” comes from “maroon”, which is another old and archaic racist term for Black people. Despicable, really. ↩︎
  4. Credit where it’s due, she was using racist language that originated in New Orleans. ↩︎
  5. Which I also find kind of offensive, really. ↩︎

Charlie Brown

Thursday morning day after Payday blog, in which I just have to get through today before it’s work-at-home Friday again. I feel rested this morning, something I’ve noticed in the last couple of weeks: by the end of the week I feel better than I do at the beginning, and it’s easier to get up. Peculiar, isn’t it? I certainly don’t get it.

It was about four years ago that the pandemic shut down the world. It seems like it was about a million years ago, doesn’t it? (And it makes me laugh every time idiotic MAGA trash ask “are you better off than you were four years ago?” Yes, yes, a million times yes, you memory-impaired inbred morons.) I remember coming to work that morning with no idea what was going on or what was about to happen. They were putting up shields around the front desk in the lobby and everything was being wiped down with bleach. I sat down at my computer and started doing some work when the announcement came that we were shutting down the entire building and closing off services and to go home. I was stunned, because the only time this ever happened was when a storm was coming in from the Gulf and the city needed to evacuate. I don’t even remember going home that day, but I do remember making hundreds and hundreds of condom packs while watching movies and rereading old books to get reading again. Christ, what a nightmare.

So yes, I am better off than I was four years ago. You’ll need to do far better than that to get me to change my vote–far far better.

I did finish my rather long blog post about the Left Coast Crime incident, but am hesitant to pull the trigger and take it public. I’m not sure how comfortable I am with it, because there’s still very much a lot of centering myself in a conversation about race…but it was my race that was being questioned; and I am still not sure how I feel about the whole thing. On the one hand, how do I write about an experience I had without putting myself into the center? On the other, isn’t it tiresome when white people make racism about themselves? I also worry that I am not being sensitive enough. I know that part of the shock of the whole thing is really because my white privilege was challenged (I do enjoy born-with-a-penis privilege until I open my mouth and my Louis Vuitton clutch falls out).

I’ll post it later today most likely, and take the slings and arrows that may come my way.

Sparky was very needy yesterday when I got home from work. He climbed up onto my shoulders and cuddled and gave me head butts, and then when I sat down in my chair (after doing some chores) to let him sleep in my lap…he stayed there until Paul got home at nine! I did write a bit more on my story, and I also realized one of the problems I was having with it was making it long enough, because in my head I always want a short story to be around five thousand words. Not every story needs to be five thousand words, Gregalicious. Seriously, sometimes it’s hard to believe that I am in the twenty-third year of my career as a fiction writer…which is also a third of my life. Wow. The world was certainly a different place when I first got started, isn’t it?

The beauty of writing is there is no right or wrong way to do it as long as the finished product is good. I get these weirdly dogmatic mentalities about writing fiction–“a short story needs to be 5k, a novel minimum of 80k”–it’s not carved onto tablets brought down from Mount Sinai–and get past that kind of stuff. But that’s the logical, everything needs to be neat and tidy part of my brain that often triggered my anxiety, and it does feel good to not be anxious the way I used to be. I also think I’ve convinced myself that my creative batteries are dead and need to be recharged. I was thinking this morning–as is my wont–that when and if I get this book done, I am going to go back to working on Chlorine and try to get it–as well as Muscles–finished. I really do need to finish all this stuff. I do want to write more Scotty books, but maybe not right away, to be honest, although I do feel like time is slipping away, but who cares if the Scotty books going forward are kind of set in the past? The older ones certainly are.

And on that note, I am heading into the spice mines. Have a lovely Thursday, Constant Reader, and I’ll be back later on.

Sea of Love

Wednesday pay-the-bills day, and I don’t feel terrible this morning. I slept decently, although I am not sleeping all the way through the night anymore, which doesn’t please me, although I am not tired nor is it difficult to get out of bed in the morning. And usually about halfway through my first cup of coffee any and all fog is lifted. Yesterday was a decent day, really. I didn’t get a lot of writing done, but I did write some. I don’t know why it’s so hard for me to write anything these days, but here’s hoping that changes really soon. I swung by the post office last night and PT to pay my bill, then was going to buy gas at the Shell on Magazine and Jackson, but the pump’s card reader wasn’t working, so I got back in the car and left, more than slightly irritated. I mean, why would you not repair the convenient way for people to purchase from you?

I did some chores when I got home around writing and being excited because my new shoes arrived! I got a pair of solid black Oxfords, and another pair of black-and-white Oxfords, only in the saddle shoe style, which I love. I am going to wear them to work today–the black-and-white ones, I mean. Oxfords are incredibly comfortable, and are my favorite shoes besides slippers and sneakers (we always called them ‘gym shoes’ when I was a kid, because that was what they were; you wore them for gym). I am going to wear the black-and-white ones to work today to break them in for Saints and Sinners.

I guess it isn’t entirely true that I didn’t write much yesterday. For a few weeks or so now I’ve been trying to write a blog entry about the Incident from Left Coast Crime in 2021. I finally got an entire first draft done, had a friend read it for potentially offensive language or attitudes–it’s about racism and homophobia I personally experienced, and if you’re going huh how did he experience racism when he’s white–well, it makes for an interesting and rather eye-opening story about white privilege and straight privilege and why it’s so important for conferences–of any kind, really–needs to do some work about making their event a safe space for everyone attending. I didn’t report the incident to the conference because it really wasn’t their fault, and Stan and Lucinda are lovely people, which is yet another reason I’ve been hesitant about writing about it. I’m pretty much finished with it now, I am just going to reread it one more time before taking it to the public. It was such a weird thing, and I’ve still not fully processed it yet.

But then again, weird things always seem to happen to me, don’t they?

So much so that I am never sure if something is weird or normal. It’s not fun.

As April slowly closes in and March continues to slip through my fingers, I am still not terribly panicked about deadlines and so forth, which is odd for me. I do need to get back to the writing grindstone sooner rather than later, and I wish I could get it out of my head that I need to finish this short story before looking seriously into finishing the book (I came up with probably the funniest drag queen name ever for one of the pageant contestants–Trudy Tradwife).

But it’s about time for me to head into the spice mines, so have a great day, Constant Reader, and I’ll probably be back later.

My Heart Is an Open Book

Well, yesterday was a pretty good day overall, I think. I managed to get some writing done (about a thousand or so words, give or take) which felt amazing, if too little; and of course I went to PT after work and it actually felt good. I think the working out after therapy is going to actually take hold this time? Of course, it remains to be seen what else life is going to throw at me in the meantime, but I feel pretty good about things, overall. After I finish this book I’m writing I may step away for the rest of the year and just live for a while? I’ll still write, and I want to be clear that I am thinking in terms of time off from deadlines, really. It would be nice to finish all these unfinished things I have lying around here, and I’d also like to clean out the physical files at some point in the near future. Operation Declutter is still working, but it’s an ongoing process. I am about to put a moratorium on new books, too, unless it’s a must-read book by a friend. I really need to make more progress on getting through the mountainous TBR stack without consistently adding to it, over and over. Just this week I added Angela Crook’s Hurt Mountain and Amina Akhtar’s Almost Surely Dead and Simone St. George’s Murder Road. The question of what to read next also has not yet been answered, so it may wind up being a reread, which is actually counterproductive–but something that breaks down the wall and gets me reading every day again for pleasure would be pretty fucking fantastic.

My short story that I am writing is starting to take shape, even if my gears have rusted and need to be oiled before I can really get to work on writing again. I like what I am doing with this story–which is more horror/Gothic suspense more than anything else, really, and it’s been a really long time since I finished a story. “When I Die” still needs to be significantly edited and revised, as do so many other things. I need to get working on the book again–I came up with a great name for the Miss Queer Utah queen, but alas, forgot it already. I am actually kind of getting excited this morning to write this book. I saw a news item on social media that DeSantis’ anti-gay legislation essentially got ended by a court decision yesterday–I’ve not read the entire article yet, but it was a “settlement”, which makes it more interesting because surely that would make it a civil case, rather than a criminal one? But anything that gets Rhonda Santis’ panties in a bunch, as well as a massive defeat for his hate-filled agenda (your daily reminder, Moms for Liberty, that real patriots HATE you and your hate agenda; have fun in hell, skanks), will always make me very very happy. I also saw that the West Virginia legislature, under pressure from constituents, dropped (or allowed to die) 21 anti-queer bills.

As Winston Churchill said, “You can always count on Americans to do the right thing–after they’ve exhausted every other possibility.”

I didn’t sleep through the entire night, but woke up a couple of times but in both instances was able to fall back asleep and get some more needed rest, which was awesome. I actually woke up this morning feeling awake rather than foggy, which is simply marvelous to contemplate. Paul was working on a grant last night, so we only got to catch up on this week’s Abbott Elementary, and soon my widowhood will end when the festivals do next weekend (not this weekend) and a dear friend is coming to town this weekend, and I hope to meet her for drinks and a good gossipy catch up. I’ve also learned this morning that when the alarm goes off the first time and Sparky makes his appearance on my pillow, to just get up and feed him…because once he’s eaten, he’ll get back into the bed and cuddle like a sweet purr-kitty, which is lovely. I really have fallen completely in love with this crazy kitty, which makes losing Scooter ever so much easier. Losing him made rescuing Sparky possible, and I imagine I will always have a cat for the rest of my life, maybe even a bonded pair at some point after Sparky goes–assuming, of course, that I will outlive Sparky.

Some more things that I ordered arrived yesterday after I picked up the mail, so I’ll have to swing by there again this afternoon, which is fine. I have to get gas, too, so it makes sense to swing uptown, come back downtown via Tchoupitoulas, and then the Shell on Jackson Avenue on the way home. Tomorrow is also payday, which is lovely–pay-the-bills day, at any rate–and then I need to start prepping for my Saints and Sinners panel. There’s always something to do, isn’t there? I also need to stop by Physiofit and pay my bill, too. I got another camera ticket yesterday, which is super-annoying–but it gave me an idea for a story or a subplot for a Scotty book, so that’s a good thing, right?

And on that note, I am heading into the spice mines. Have a lovely Tuesday, Constant Reader, and I will most likely be back again later.

The Happy Organ

I cannot believe today’s title was actually a hit song in 1959. I mean, the jokes here simply write themselves.

Monday morning and back to the office morning blog. It was a curiously relaxing weekend, but my energy levels were up and down the whole time. Last night, of course, when I needed to go to sleep? After two nights of falling asleep in my chair, here I was, having trouble falling asleep. I think it’ll be okay for tonight, though, since I have PT after work. It rained off and on yesterday for most of the day, and the temperature dropped overnight. Absolutely no huzzahs on that front, for sure. I do think not going to do PT last Monday messed up my week significantly, so I definitely have to go tonight. I was very happy to finish reading my book, too. It had been so long since I was able to commit to a book, it was nice to get drawn into one again, even if it did take me over a week to finish. I don’t read as fast as I used to, nor do I write as much or as fast as I used to. This is going to have to be overcome soon enough, but that’s okay. I think my full-fledged deadline panic mode will probably start kicking into gear again at some point this week.

We finished season one of The Tourist last night, and dipped into season two–which looks to be just as good as the first. I don’t know how long this show will be able to keep going on the basic premise that he has no memory of who or what he was before waking up in the hospital in the first episode of season one, and Jamie Dornan is wonderful in the lead role, menacing when called for, but delightfully funny at others. And Danielle Macdonald, who has been delightful in everything I’ve seen her in (including Dumplin’), is doing some really good work as Helen. Highly recommended, even though Dornan isn’t shirtless nearly enough. Dornan should be shirtless at least once per episode. Think of it as “fan service.”

I’ve managed to gain back all the weight I’ve lost since the soft food diet began after Labor Day. This doesn’t please me, to say the least. It’s actually disappointing. But if I am barbecuing burgers on the weekends and/or ordering pizza…it’s not really a surprise. I’ve also gotten my taste for hamburgers back, which is kind of nice. The new dentures have altered my tastes somewhat, but they seem to be shifting back at last, which is nice. Last year was a bit of a slog, wasn’t it? It’s not a surprise that it’s taken me a while to recover from everything–from the arm injury to the dental surgery to the arm surgery to Mom and Scooter dying and this endless war with my insurance company–any one of these things on their own would be leveling; having it all happen within the same year is pretty fucking terrible, frankly. But… I am also a firm believer in having all the bad stuff happen within a certain period of time, because you get so overwhelmed with everything that you really can’t focus on your own misery at any time. But I am hoping that once the PT is done and I can exercise normally again, that I’ll get to the gym at least twice a week.

And on that note, I am heading into the spice mines. Happy Monday, everyone.

Season of the Witch

I read a lot of Norah Lofts when I lived in the suburbs of Chicago.

I originally found her through her historical fictional biographies of royal women, or royal-adjacent. I was in a Henry VIII phase–the whole six wives thing–and I saw a copy of her book about Anne Boleyn–The Concubine–on the wire racks at Zayre’s, so I bought it. It was very well done, and Lofts tried to get into the head of Anne and who she was, the reasons she basically changed Western civilization, and gave me an entirely new perspective on the infamous Anne. From there I went on to A Rose for Virtue (Napoleon’s stepdaughter/sister-in-law Hortense de Beauharnais, Queen of Holland), The King’s Pleasure (Katherine of Aragon), Crown of Aloes (Isabella of Castile), The Lost Queen (Caroline Matilda of Denmark), and Eleanor the Queen (Eleanor of Aquitaine)1. I also read, from there, some of her historical fiction, which I greatly enjoyed (Nethergate comes to mind). What I liked most about Lofts was she was not, in any way, a sentimental writer; her stories didn’t end happily all the time (especially her books about royal women; they all died miserable). I always wanted to read her Nativity novel, How Far to Bethlehem?, or her book Esther (obviously, the Bible’s Queen Esther). I remembered Lofts sometime within the last four or five years, and got a copy of her ghost story collection, which I enjoyed.

And then I remembered one whose plot I really couldn’t recollect–The Little Wax Doll, and got a second hand copy on-line.

It was like reading an entirely new novel, and I am glad I revisited it, believe you me.

The interview had been arranged to take place in London at half past three on a Saturday afternoon. This was a time so extremely convenient to Miss Mayfield that she was disposed to regard it as providential. It had saved her from the embarrassment of having to ask for time off to attend an interview in which she might not be successful, and from which she might be obliged to return to face her present Head’s resentment. In her diffident attempt to maintain secrecy she had left Alchester without the precaution of obtaining a testimonial. This she recognised as the action of a fool, but she had taught in the ugly Midland town for a bare two years, and she carried in her shabby handbag a coolly eulogistic report of her twenty years’ work in Africa, If that did not suffice, and if the interview showed any sign of leading to a new appointment, then would be time enough to approach Miss Stevens and break the news she was contemplating a move,

Canon Thorby had written, “Claridge’s Hotel would be convenient for me, since I have another appointment there earlier in the day. I shall be waiting for you and if you ask at the desk someone will will point me out to you.”

He wrote on thick smooth paper which justified the term “cream-laid.” His writing was small, elegant, meticulously legible. It called up an imaginry vision of the writer, plump, rubicund, with a fringe of silvery hair and tranquil blue eyes. Kindly, perhaps a trifle pompous.

As I said earlier, I didn’t really remember much of this story, other than the main character was an older schoolteacher moving to an idyllic village in East Anglia to teach at the village school, and the little rural village has some pretty dark secrets that she’s going to stumble into. Another thing I’d forgotten–although I should have remembered from reading her ghost story collection–was how compelling a writer she was. There are beautiful turns of phrase everywhere, as well as observations about life–particularly in a small village–that are really spot on, clever and insightful.

I also love that her heroine is a woman many people would overlook–particularly in the time in which this book was written (originally published in 1960)–a dowdy, plain spinster in either her late thirties or early forties. I wouldn’t have thought much about it when I first read the book, but the deep devotion of her attachment to a woman named Ruth, with whom she built a school and hospital in Kenya and worked there with her for forty years, and her determination to save enough money so she and Ruth can retire together and share a cottage blissfully for the rest of their lives?

In this read, this friendship just screamed lesbian to me.

Deborah Mayfield could easily have turned into a stereotype–the old maid schoolteacher–but Lofts isn’t interested in stereotypes; she created a character who is interesting by virtue of the journey she takes over the course of the story. She is a bit unsure of herself at the beginning of the book, always afraid of calling attention to herself and just keeps her opinions to herself. But as she falls in love with this interesting little village and blossoms with not only her students but the other villagers–she still sees herself as a nonentity, not really seeing herself as the others see her–she also, slowly but surely, finds herself being pulled into a strange situation which makes her, always questioning herself, question herself further. Surely, what she suspects cannot be? There can’t be people who believe in the dark arts and witchcraft in this town? But it’s really the only explanation, and as she gets pulled further and further into the odd circumstances regarding her student Ethel and her grandmother Granny Rigby–to the point where she is willing to give up her comfy little home and job to try to call out what’s going on in Walwyk–she begins to get a sense of her own power; the inability to stand by and do nothing while something untoward is going on strengthen her resolve and makes her stronger.

Then about halfway through the book there is a huge plot twist, which throws everything into a different, just as suspenseful and thrilling, direction–and one in which Deborah finally comes into her own, managing to get her way back to Walwyk in order to stop a horrible outcome that isn’t predestined.

One of the other things I like about the book is Lofts’ lack of sentimentality. The ending of the book makes it seem as though the day has been saved…but has it, after all? I also love that we never really know if there is actually witchcraft going on in the town–or maybe it just looks like it? Lofts leaves this up in the air as well–which she probably wouldn’t get away with today.

A terrific reread, and a terrific author I am very happy to rediscover.

  1. She also wrote The Lute Player, about Richard the Lionhearted, his wife Berengaria, and the minstrel Blondel–which was my first exposure to the idea that Richard, the great English hero, was queer. That revelation was a bit life changing, as I began looking for hints of homosexuality being covered up in history books. ↩︎

Quiet Village

Sunday morning and Daylight Savings Time begins, which means it’s an hour later than my body thinks it is, and that’s fine. I would imagine that the real brick wall as far as the time change is concerned is going to be hit tomorrow morning when I get up for work. But there are worse things, after all; there are always worse things. But yesterday was a pretty decent day, overall. I got some things done, not nearly enough, and had my ZOOM panel for Murderous March around one thirty my time; ably moderated by Richie Narvaez, it was quite a lot of fun, but I am never sure how I am coming across when it’s ZOOM–no audience reactions to play off–so I will hope that it all went well and the audience enjoyed it as much as I did. I ordered a pizza from U Pizza (I’d been a-hankering for one all week, frankly) for dinner, and spent most of the day finishing reading The Little Wax Doll, rereading other books and stories in progress, before finally settling in to watch a couple of episodes of The Tourist–but I kept falling asleep (from being tired, nothing to do with boredom, because the show is bizarre and twisty and hilarious and kind of like a Coen Brothers movie, so clearly I am loving the show), and finally went to bed around ten. I slept very well, too. As for today, there’s still a lot I need to get done, writing wise, and at some point I have to make groceries today, too. The Oscars are tonight, but I’m not terribly interested in them, to be honest.

I also tried watching Aquaman and the Lost Kingdom, but shut it off after about fifteen minutes. I love Jason Momoa, but not THAT much.

I did find the missing printer ink cartridges, by the way. I guess I was looking right at it all along and not seeing it. Heavy sigh.

Sparky is feeling rambunctious this morning, and has already gashed my right index finger with one of his talons. But this helped remind me that I took his hanging toy down yesterday so it wasn’t on camera, and didn’t put it back up. Problem solved, and now he’s jumping at it, and all’s well in the Lost Apartment. Big Kitten Energy. He’s lucky he’s so sweet and adorable, honestly.

But it looks to be a beautiful day outside already, which is great, and hopefully this good mood will last as long as my energy does. I’d like to be able to get a lot done today, and get prepared for the week. A friend will be in town this weekend, which is very exciting as I’ve not seen her in a very long time, which will be so delightful. I do miss my friends.

This week the news broke that Carol Gelderman had died. Carol, a writer and professor at UNO, was an absolute delight. I didn’t know her very well, but she was a frequent panelist at the Tennessee Williams Festival, and so I’d run into her quite a lot. Every time, she would give me a dazzling smile, shove her right hand at me and say “Hi, I’m Carol Gelderman” and I would smile and say “Lovely to see you again, Carol” and she’d make a wonderful “pshaw” noise and say, “I don’t know what’s wrong with me” and give me a big hug, and we’d laugh and laugh. She also always had a flask in her purse. Check out her biography of Mary McCarthy sometime. It’s very sad that I’ll never laugh with her at a Festival party again. RIP, Carol, and thanks for the great memories.

You’ll probably not recognize me should there be an afterlife, either, Carol, and I hope that is the case.

And on that sad note, I am heading into the spice mines for the day. Hope your Sunday is lovely, Constant Reader, and I may be back later. One never does know, you know.

Mr. Blue

Saturday morning blog, after a rather dreary and gloomy Friday. It clearly rained overnight, as everything outside is wet. I was exhausted yesterday after I was finished with PT and daytime work duties; by the time I ran my errands I was exhausted. I got a delivery from Sam’s last evening too, which had to be lugged into the apartment. I was dozing off in my chair a lot last night while watching documentaries about Spanish history, the Moors in Iberia, and the line of regnant kings and queens. It’s an interesting subject, to be sure; the physical and mental exhaustion did it, not the lack of interest or boredom. I even went to bed early and slept like a stone (I’ve always found that cliché odd; stones aren’t sentient so they don’t sleep).

I have an on-line panel today at 1:30 for Murderous March, an event put together by Upper Hudson Sisters in Crime, so I do hope if you have time, you’ll join us; they have panels and things programmed all day so head over to their website and take a look; you can also register there (it’s free!), and it should be a good and entertaining and informative conversation. I’m going to try to get some writing done before and after, as well as cleaning the apartment. I also want to do some more reading; I did spend some time with Norah Lofts’ The Little Wax Doll, which I am really enjoying. About a hundred pages in the story took a surprising turn; Lofts was rather good at that, if I recall correctly. I’ll definitely talk about Lofts more when I finish the book and write about it.

Tomorrow I’ll go out and make groceries, probably in the morning, and today is going to be the day where I make a definitive list for tomorrow, and I also need to check my to-do list to see what I’ve managed and what I’ve not thus far, as well as make one for the weekend. Ugh, I also have to start working on my taxes; a tedious chore to be sure, but one that needs doing. I’ll put that on the list for next weekend. I’m also going to try to get some of these pending blog drafts finished this weekend–with me luck, there are quite a few of them–but they either need to be finished at some point, or simply deleted and given up on. (It’s really hard for me to let go of ideas for things.)

But sometimes…sometimes you do have to let things go. Grim as it is to think, I know I am never going to write all the ideas I already have, let alone any new ideas that come to me. I really need to clean out the files–I have so many; ideas that are so old that I don’t even remember having them, and the way things are going I am not entirely sure I’ll even be able to finish writing the things I am currently working on, either. I do need to tackle the rust and grease the gears and unlock my writing drive. Heavy sigh. The malaise is gone, I think; I’m not really sure, to be honest, where it came from in the first place. I’m never sure where it comes from. I think it has to do with my faulty brain chemistry, if I am being honest. Sigh.

And on that dreary note, I am going to have my breakfast preparatory to heading into the spice mines. Have a lovely Saturday–I’ll probably be back later.

Kansas City

Friday morning work-at-home blog, in which I am up ridiculously early for a Friday morning thanks to a 7 a.m. PT appointment. What is great about that–for a change–is I’ll be back home around eight-ish and will be very wide awake, which is a great start to the day. I should really not sleep late on weekends, because it alters my body clock and makes Monday morning more difficult than it needs to be. But I’ve had a cup of coffee and am waking up some, which is great, even though I probably won’t finish this before I have to leave this morning. I have a department meeting after I get home, and then of course I have work-at-home duties and chores. Woo-hoo! Definitely living large this morning, aren’t I? So we’ll have to see how the day goes before I do any writing tonight. I’m going to be exhausted from the PT, I suspect. One never knows, does one?

Well, I was right. I didn’t finish before I had to leave for PT and I was even a few minutes late! It definitely woke me up while exhausting me at the same time, which happens. I am very tired now, but wide awake. I’ll probably feel some serious fatigue later, too. AH, well, at least I got it out of the way.

This week we had a site visit from one of our major funders, and I was told we all needed to dress up for the three days, so I did. (NARRATOR VOICE: I was one of the few who did all three days.) It was kind of fun to wear nice clothes and shoes for a change, but yesterday reminded me how much I hate my black slip-on dress shoes, so I decided then and there I was going to throw them away at last when I got home and order a new pair, preferable Oxfords, all black. I did find those shoes, and ordered them, but then for the hell of it I looked for what I’ve not been able to find for years, black and white Oxfords that look like classic saddle shoes. I had a pair in college and I loved those shoes. Well, yesterday I managed to find a pair, so I ordered them immediately. With any luck, they will make their debut at Saints and Sinners this year. I never really get to dress up very often, and so fancier shoes don’t get worn very often. (Some pairs I’ve had for well over a decade and maybe have worn five or six times, if that.) Dressing up also made me realize almost everything I own that is dressy is mostly red or black. I should probably go through the clothes in the closet since I have no idea what is even in there anymore.

I watched the season finale of Feud last night, and didn’t feel much about it; the performances were fantastic, as always, but I don’t like the fiction that Babe Paley regretted cutting him out of her life and even talked to the other women about forgiving him. She most definitely did not have second thoughts, and having her telling her husband and her friends all this stuff about how much she missed him and how she wanted to forgive him and talked to the other women about being kinder? This whole fantasy episode where (SPOILER) they are together again after death, happily spending eternity together? Bitch, please. It softens her character, certainly, which is audience-service, but it’s really a betrayal of who she was and how betrayed and hurt she felt. I would have much preferred that the others tried to convince her to forgive him and she wouldn’t. Maybe not the character arc Naomi Watts would prefer, but it would have been more poignant–answered prayers, indeed.

And on that note, it’s time for my meeting so I am heading into the spice mines. Have a marvelous Friday and who knows? I may be back later.

Stagger Lee

Thursday last morning in the office this week blog. I get to go in a little later because I have to stay until five tonight; and of course tomorrow morning I have PT at the ungodly hour of seven a.m. Gah. But it’s okay, really. I slept super well last night–probably the best night’s sleep of the week–and I finally got my keyboard for the iPad yesterday: huzzah! It works beautifully, too…which is the last excuse I had for not getting any writing done (or as much as I would like). Now I have a functional laptop and a functional iPad for writing anywhere in the house, which is kind of fun. I can get my iPad in the morning and write in bed if I want, or I can take the laptop up there, or…so many plethoras of options, and NO MORE EXCUSES.

Oh, I’ll still make excuses, of course, to get out of doing the day’s writing. And I did do some yesterday–I wrote about seven hundred or so words on “Passenger to Franklin” (an Agatha Christie title homage that really pleases me far more than it probably should)–but very little of anything else other than watching Part II of The Real Housewives of Beverly Hills reunion (Kyle Richards remains a disgusting piece of shit bitch who doesn’t need to be on my television screen anymore). I then spent the rest of the evening watching the news (or clips from the news) and despairing further about the future of the country and grateful again that I am old. It’s about the only benefit to being old, really, and not having children: the future isn’t really my problem, but at the same time, I also don’t want the adults of the future to have to deal with a destroyed and/or increasingly hostile and damaged planet, either, because I am not a monster. Sometimes I think I worry about the future more than people who actually do have kids, or are young.

I watched a really interesting conversation between Rachel Maddow and Nicolle Wallace last night–and they were both right: the Republican Party of today wants to eliminate our democracy and set up an authoritarian state where they are always in charge and they can get rid of everyone they don’t like. Sound familiar? See Berlin, 1933. It’s scary to contemplate, and even scarier to realize The Handmaid’s Tale was actually very prescient. I became worried about authoritarianism coming to the US during the Reagan years and what followed, when the Republican party became convinced that they had a divine right and mandate to always be in power. As I watched people get subsumed by Fox Propaganda in the 1990s (when the character assassination of Hilary Clinton truly began), I saw it for what it was: definitely not a news organization, and it’s partisan nature had everything to do with the rollback on rules about what is and isn’t news…during the Reagan administration. It’s astonishing how little people think about the recent past, or even try to put the present in the context of the recent past.

Let alone thinking about the older history, which no one knows1. Then again, I am from a part of the country that proudly claims hatred and bigotry as their heritage, so maybe knowing history might not help as much as I would like to believe.

Heavy heaving sigh.

Those who don’t know history are doomed to repeat it.

I’m doing a panel for a Sisters in Crime chapter on-line event this weekend, do tune in to any or all of the antics this weekend. It’s called Murderous March, and it’s being put on by the Upper Hudson Sisters chapter, and you can register to view the panels here. My panel is at 2:30 eastern, it’s called “It Was a Dark and Stormy Night,” and is being moderated by the wonderful Richie Narvaez. My co-panelists are the amazing Carol Pouliot, Edwin Hill, Tina Bellegarde, and M. E. Browning. It should be a pretty good time, I think.

And on that note, I think I’ll head into the spice mines. Have a lovely day, Constant Reader, and I’ll probably be back later.