Jack and Diane

Ah, the joys of a work-at-home Friday. I do sincerely hope they never take this away, because I will surely miss it. I was able to take Paul and Tug to meet the Cat Practice so he can get to know them, get his nails trimmed (he was quite shocked to try to climb my leg and not be able to hook into the fabric with those talons) and get a cat leukemia vaccination. They fell madly in love with him as he definitely turned the “I’m so adorable aren’t I?” kitten magic on for them, and they also confirmed our suspicions: he’s going to be a big cat; he’s already gotten much longer in the short time we’ve had him, and his legs are long and his paws are pretty big. He had no problem with the nail trim as it was occurring, making me think we might even be able to do it ourselves (Skittle would have never stood for it, and Scooter wasn’t a fan, either, and I was always worried that we’d hurt them by accident), and then it was back home and back to data entry and quality assurance and condom packing, woo-hoo! But while I was doing all of these things I had music on and was able to get chores done while taking breaks to get up and away from the work every now and again. We also went to Costco after my work was completed for the day–or the working hours ended, at any rate–which was nice. I don’t know why Costco is such a pleasant experience for me almost every time we go there, but it is–I also love how they organize the stuff in your carts for maximum efficiency and space usage; I try to load the cart in the same way. I also realized that there’s no need for me to have the back seat set up; why not put the seats down all the time and just have that big space in the back for loading groceries and so forth? It certainly doesn’t affect me driving in any way, and why not? Usually loading everything into the back doesn’t work and is an unsuccessful game of Jenga; but with the seats down it was not a problem at all.

It only took me six years to figure this out, of course.

Tonight is the LSU-Alabama game, which is generally an enormous anxiety trigger for me. The weird wiring of my brain makes me commit fully as a fan to the point sometimes where the games are emotionally exhausting and draining for me, and since even before the pandemic I’ve been trying to dial that back. There’s such a thing as too vested, and I don’t enjoy those emotional rollercoasters. I do enjoy the thrills and excitement of watching games, and I do take pleasure in being a sports fan–but I don’t want to be a sore loser or go to a dark place if the game doesn’t go well. It’s a game. I love my LSU Tigers and it’s always delightful and a lot of fun when they win–but if they have a bad year or don’t win or whatever, it doesn’t impact my life in any way, shape or form. That seems to be working for the most part–I’ve had a few moments this season that were setbacks to the healthy mental progress I’ve made, but it certainly made a huge difference in how I watched and enjoyed the game last year…which LSU actually won. It was a great game, and even if LSU doesn’t win, I don’t mind as long as it’s a good game and they play well. I have no idea how good any team is this year; even invincible Georgia has had a few shaky moments of vulnerability this year. As the second half of the season rolls on, conference races and play-off berths will be earned as well as trophies and awards.

I was going to run some errands today, but I had a delivery scheduled last night and the lazy incompetent delivery driver (for the record, I always overtip) couldn’t be bothered to contact me by text, as instructed, so my order was returned. I found out this morning it will go out again for delivery today, with no idea or concept or when or what kind of window we were looking at. Their on-line customer service was completely useless, I might add, so now I get to hang around the house all day waiting, which is incredibly frustrating.

I need to make groceries, I wanted to swing by Petco to get some more toys for Tug (and also price kitten foods and special treats), and I also need to go to Lowe’s. I need air filters for the apartment, I need to get a wagon to help bring groceries in when I am recovering from surgery, and I also want to get an easy to assemble set of blinds for the center window here in the workspace. Facebook Memories reminded me yesterday of how long ago it was when my beloved shade crepe myrtles trees were brutalized and destroyed, forcing me to put up an LSU blanket over the window to block the sun. I am too embarrassed to admit how long this blanket has been in my window instead of blinds, but that’s going to finally come to an end this weekend. We’ll see how it goes, and if it’s not a horrible disaster I’ll go ahead and get blinds for the other two windows so they all match. Look at me, taking charge of a situation for once instead of being engulfed in ennui and just letting it continue to slide!

Progress indeed!

We told the Cat Practice Tug’s name is Sparky, even though I keep calling him Tug (and sometimes Boot, like he’s Scooter), and so I decided yesterday that since there’s really no point in continuing the pretense that I am anything other than a Crazy Cat Lady, he’s getting a Crazy Cat Lady Name: Touglas MacSparquer, hence both Tug and Sparky are his names. It also pays tribute to my maternal Scottish line, so it also kind of honors my mom and no, I won’t be telling Dad that.

Since my plans for the day were altered irrevocably by the shitty delivery service, I hope to spend the rest of the day doing things while the games are playing in the living room, and thinking about the next book I am going to write. I have some emails to answer and yes, it’s fine, I can keep my phone handy and check it periodically to see the status of the delivery. This, by the way, is what boomers mean when they talk about how service in the country has declined. But it’s fine, really–I prefer to go to the West Bank on Sundays anyway, and this way I can actually take inventory and make a proper list. My frustrations over the change in plans for the day is fine; I can get stuff done around here and maybe even do some cleaning and writing.

And I can spend some time this morning with Lou Berney’s Dark Ride, which I started reading the other day at my appointment. Huzzah for that, and we’ll just get shit done around here today. That’s a good plan, and one I can live with….and truth be told I didn’t really want to go to the West Bank this morning, so here we are.

Have a great Saturday, Constant Reader, and I will no doubt be back later with some more blatant self-promotional posts.

Mickey

Friday morning work-at-home blog, and the weather is supposed to get more back to normal for this time of year—highs during the day anywhere from the lower 70s to the mid 80s, dropping to the 60’s at night. It makes it even harder to get out of bed in the chill of the morning–and my blankets are incredibly warm and comfortable, as is the bed. But li’l Tug expects to get fed every morning around six (and is more than happy to let me know six is nigh by leaping over Paul and landing on me, before curling up next to my head while waiting patiently for me to get up and feed him and give him fresh water), which is going to make the time change this weekend a bit irritating. I also hate going to work and coming home in the dark, which is also soul-destroying because you feel like you’ve lost the entire day at the office.

But I slept well last night and let myself go back to sleep after the daily six a.m. feed-me Tug attack, which felt great. There’s a mail run to do and Tug’s first vet visit to fit into the day, and we’re going to Costco after I finish my work at home chores later. The constant, on-going kitten-proofing of the apartment can also prove challenging because you never know what’s going to catch his inquisitive must-play-with-that eye, and he is very curious and adventurous about anything. Cabinets can’t be left open. He’ll climb into the dishwasher as I am loading it–but no curiosity about the dryer yet. He’s also fascinated by water, like Skittle was–but the shower was uninteresting to him; not the case with Tug. He’ll tightrope around the rim of the tub while I’m showering and also walk between the shower curtain and the liner. He’s adorable and completely in charge around here, if you haven’t figured that out yet.

And I love having a purring kitty donut sleeping in my lap while I watch television or read.

Last night we watched this week’s The Morning Show, which absolutely felt like a season finale; I’m not sure if it was or not but it felt like it. I wasn’t super-tired when I got home, but Tug was especially needy so I repaired to my easy chair where I watched this week’s Real Housewives of Beverly Hills–which was kind of dull; but the fun of watching these shows is watching and reading the reactions of the fans and the recaps and so forth. I was thinking yesterday that these shows create community within their fans, as people want to talk about the cast and what’s going on with them, happily judging their lives, their behavior, their clothes, their make-up, their hair, their homes and their families. I was thinking this was unique to reality shows–remembering how everyone used to talk about Survivor and The Bachelor and American Idol back in the day, similar to how soaps would have group watches on campus where everyone talked about the storylines and the characters and their interactions. But we also did that with Glee and Lost and Desperate Housewives and various other shows. I do wonder what is it about film and television that drives people with the urge and need to talk about it with other people?

Then again, I always wanted to talk about books with other people–so I guess I can get it.

I was realizing the other day that this year in December will mark nineteen years of this blog–first on Livejournal and then moved here when I’d finally had enough of the Russian propaganda and spam over there–which is a longer commitment than most straight relationships and marriages, which is an interesting way to look at it. I started keeping it around Christmas of 2004, while we were still living in the carriage house–we wouldn’t move into the main house until June or July 2005; only to be moved back into the carriage house by Hurricane Katrina later that year. It’s also hard to believe sometimes that Katrina–and the Incident with Paul–was so long ago now; just like the Virginia Incident was a long time ago. Time inevitably passes, and just going through your every day routine living your life as best you can one morning you realize a lot of time has passed. The pandemic shutdown was almost four years ago, for fuck’s sake. We are now in year three going on year four of the COVID-19 pandemic, although no one really talks about it anymore. I am going to write about that whole experience at some point–there are at least three more Scotty books I want and/or need to write, which will take New Orleans through the cursed Carnival of 2020 (and the Hard Rock hotel collapse) and the shutdown and then afterwards. I think that’s been part of the creative malaise lately; knowing that the Scotty series, about to debut its ninth volume, is finally winding down. There are a lot of things I’ve wanted to avoid with these books but with the series continually going, I don’t have a choice. Scotty’s grandparents are all in their nineties by now–so death is going to have to come to the family. On the page or off the page? I do think it might be interesting to explore the Bradley side of the family a bit more; perhaps the death of the Bradley grandparents and a struggle over the will or something could be the basis for a book; perhaps COVID-19 might claim them, I don’t know. But I know I’ve not written about the shutdown or the pandemic, and it feels kind of cowardly to not address it in fiction yet.

Maybe I should finish that pandemic short story I started, “The Flagellants.”

I’m also thinking about getting blinds for the kitchen windows at long last; a do-it-yourself project I think I can handle.

And on that note, I’m getting another cup of coffee and heading into the spice mines. Y’all have a great Friday, and I’ll be back later with more blatant self-promotion.

Back to My Roots

Sick of my self-promotion yet? You can always scroll away, which is truly the loveliest thing about the Internet. You can always scroll past or close the window.

But buckle up, buttercup–I got another book coming out in ten days.

This is what happen when you blow deadlines, by the way. One of these was supposed to come out before Bouchercon–the Scotty–but a lot was going on in the second half of last year, okay? (The takeaway from this is don’t be like Greg–meet your deadlines.)

So, Greg, you decided to write a book that was an origin story for a drag queen amateur sleuth. Why start with the origin story?

Two reasons; one practical and the other artistic. The practical reason being that I’ve never done drag. I know some people who are drag performers, and as a gay man I’ve always been aware that drag is a part of our bar culture. Of course I’ve watched RuPaul’s Drag Race–not regularly anymore, but was a big fan in the original seasons. But watching a reality show isn’t enough research to write authentically about drag. I also didn’t have a lot of time to do a deep dive into drag culture and the world of drag; there wasn’t a big turnaround on the book from conception to contract to deadline to release. Artistically, I wanted to show his journey from the casual thought about possibly taking it up to actually becoming one and growing and developing as a performing queen. I also thought it would be more interesting to look at the world of drag and performance from the neophyte point of view; a wide-eyed outsider learning the ins and outs of what drag means.

Do you feel that writing such a book in our modern times is a political act? Drag queens have been under attack for quite some time now from the religious right, trotting out the tired old homophobic tropes of “grooming” and “recruiting.” How much did that play a part in your thought process of writing?

Anything queer these days is a political act. It’s horrible, but it’s been this way most of my life.

To begin with, drag has been around forever. Thetis dressed Achilles as a woman and hid him away at the court of King Lycomedes of Skyros to escape serving in the Trojan War. Women used to be barred from performing on-stage, so women’s roles were played by men for centuries. The examples from before the twentieth century are endless.

Usually, men in women’s clothes was used as a sight-gag–what could be funnier than a man wearing women’s clothing, after all, ha ha ha ha–but I remember Bugs Bunny and other cartoon characters doing it. Milton Berle, television’s first star, used the gag repeatedly and effectively and became famous for it. I remember watching Geraldine as a child on The Flip Wilson Show, and of course Some Like It Hot is one of the greatest comedies ever filmed (Tony Curtis made a beautiful woman, actually). Harvey Kormann often wore drag on The Carol Burnett Show, and the list just goes on and on and on–Bosom Buddies, Mrs. Doubtfire, etc. Gay bars have hosted drag shows for decades. The current problem with drag has nothing to do with grooming or pedophilia or recruiting and everything to do with right-wing ignorance; the conflation that transwomen are a threat to public safety and are really just drag queens; therefore in their logic drag queens are also a threat to public safety. It’s ignorant, uneducated, and morally reprehensible.

None of this is even about actual, valid concerns from parents wanting more dialogue on the subject. No, it’s about grifting for cash from homophobes and transphobes, and trying to get political and societal power by selling bigotry, prejudice and ignorance. It’s despicable, craven and cowardly.

It had never occurred to me to write a series, or a book, or even a short story centering someone who does drag; the book wasn’t my idea. But once I was recruited for the project, there was no question in my mind as to whether I would do or not; of course I would. I had been getting very angry and frustrated with all the transphobia and homophobia I’ve been witnessing since the rise of hateful trash like that LibsofTikTok (all you need to do is retweet that heartless failure of a human being to be blocked by me everywhere and your existence winked out of my life and world, never to return), and wanting to do something to try to counteract all of the lies and hatred and discrimination. I didn’t even have to think twice to say yes to this. Transpeople are my queer siblings, and so are drag performers. Come for my community at your own peril. I was happy to write a book addressing some of these issues while also showing how much ignorance, outright lies, and hatred those “issues” are built upon.

Flip Wilson as Geraldine; Some Like It Hot, and Bugs Bunny

This is your fourth mystery series set in New Orleans. Is it difficult to come up with a new concept for a series set there? Do you ever fear repeating yourself, or not being able to differentiate between the series?

You can never run out of ideas or things to write about when it comes to New Orleans. I’ve written nineteen or so books set here, and haven’t even scratched the surface of the material that is here–and when you extrapolate further to Louisiana, there’s even more. I go down research wormholes all the time. I wrote a story several years ago for an anthology called The Only One in the World, and the anthology premise was everyone had to write a Sherlock Holmes story; the only thing that was off-limits was the London of Holmes’ time. So I set my story in 1916 New Orleans, and had to do some research to make sure the foundation of the story was solid. This sent me down so many research wormholes–ones I am still following to this day, while finding new ones all the time. The Sherlock story led me to the 1915 hurricane, which wiped out several lake shore villages on both Lake Pontchartrain and Lake Borgne; turns out the first Filipino settlement/immigration in the United States was here, on Lake Borgne. Just today I found out Louisiana had one of the only, if not the only, leper hospitals in the US. In my novels I’ve touched briefly on the history of the city and the state–Scotty’s dealt with the Cabildo Fire and the legacy of Huey Long, for example–but it’s always a challenge to start a new series set in New Orleans.

Scotty lives in the French Quarter and Chanse lives in the Lower Garden District, and most of their cases take them mostly into the neighborhoods that are my New Orleans–Uptown, the Quarter, the Marigny and the Bywater. I’ve not even covered the entire city! Sometimes a case takes them over the bridge to the West Bank or over the causeway to the North Shore, but the stories aren’t set there. So, for A Streetcar Named Murder, I put Valerie in the Irish Channel close to Louisiana and Magazine streets. For Jem, his inherited home is on St. Roch Avenue in the neighborhood known as both the Seventh Ward or St. Roch (realtors are trying to rebrand it as the “new Marigny,” which is laughable) and while he and his friends do go to the bars in the Quarter, a fictional one on St. Claude Avenue I named Baby Jane Hudson’s (which will eventually devolve, as things are wont to in this city’s gay community, BJ’s) is their usual hangout. I want this series to focus more on that part of town more than anything else.

I do worry about how easy it is to repeat yourself as a writer. I’ve mentioned before I started writing a stand-alone (potential first book in a new series) with a different main character here in New Orleans but realized all I was doing was making him a hybrid of both Chanse and Scotty–and so I put that one away in a drawer. I may come back to it sometime. But I do think Jem is dissimilar from both Chanse and Scotty enough so readers of both series won’t think “retread!”

So this is the start of a new series?

I’m writing a sequel called You Gone, Girl, which is set at a national drag pageant in Florida. So it’ll be political too. I really like Jem and his community of friends, so I hope this turns into a long-running series. I know I enjoy writing him, and that’s always key for me.

Please order it here. Retirement from the day job ain’t looking good, folks, so please, buy as many copies as you can. They make especially great gifts for the tight-assed evangelical homophobes in your life.

Maneater

Thursday and my last day in the office for the week. I also decided to go in a half-hour later than usual and stay until five instead of four-thirty; alert the media! I know how hard it is to go on without knowing these minute details of my life. But it was cold this morning, and Tug woke me at the usual time–but curled up and went to sleep next to my head on my pillow once I hit snooze for the first time. Of course now that he’s awake and eaten and had some water, he’s all over the kitchen counters this morning knocking things off. He is particularly fond of pens and cigarette lighters–Paul is missing any number of them, and I’ve noticed he always make a beeline to any lighter lying around. Why the fascination with my pens and Paul’s cigarette lighters is a mystery for the ages.

I was tired when I got home yesterday. I had book mail yesterday (Tananarive Due’s The Reformatory, which is a horror writer’s version of the Dozier School for Boys in Florida, which I’ve already read two fictionalized versions already–Lori Roy’s and Colson Whitehead’s). I’ve not read Due before–my own fault, and no one else’s–but am really looking forward into digging into this one. I was also oddly tired by the time I got home; I felt fine when I left work, but after a couple of errands I was exhausted by the time I got home. The termite exterminator came by yesterday morning (the hole in the kitchen roof was partly rot and partly termite damage), and apparently Tug was fascinated by the Terminix man. I also watched another episode of Moonlighting last night–guest star was a very young, pre-China Beach Dana Delaney–(that’s another show I wouldn’t mind revisiting; does anyone else remember China Beach?) and I enjoyed it thoroughly. Paul and I then finished The Fall of the House of Usher, which was really quite good and very well done; I also had read a piece recently which stated that Mike Flanagan has placed Ryan Murphy and American Horror Story as everyone’s go-to horror television creator. I will even go further than this and say Flanagan’s surpassed him. There were, at best, three top-level seasons of AHS–“Murder House,” “Asylum” and the election one; but it would be hard for me to say than any Murphy season is superior to any of Flanagan’s work; Midnight Mass alone was so superior to any of Murphy’s seasons that it’s not even a fair comparison–and Murphy had Jessica Lange and all of those other amazing talents in his repertory company.

I also recognized yesterday that I’ve been in a bad place since somewhere around last Thursday. There have been moments this week where I’ve come out of it and gotten some things done, but it’s still there. When I came home yesterday I intended to finish laundry and the dishes, but Tug wanted a lap bed and I gave in, figuring I wouldn’t be there for very long. This was incorrect; he slept there for several hours and since I was tired AND comfortable, I didn’t disturb him and just stayed there, watching Youtube documentaries about the Holy Roman Empire and how it slowly but surely divested itself of its association with the Papacy; Charles V being the last emperor to be actually crowned by a pope. I’ve also been reading The Rival Queens, which is marvelous–it’s a history of Catherine de Medici, Queen of France and her daughter Marguerite, Queen of Navarre–known to history and literature as Queen Margot (which is also the name of the Dumas book about her). I’ve always wanted to write a suspense/intrigue novel set during that time period, and having to do with Catherine de Medici’s Flying Squadron–women who were trained spies and seductresses in her employ. Margot herself is fascinating–and both women would be in my history The Monstrous Regiment of Women about all the women who held power in the sixteenth century. Margot was as equally fascinating as her mother, and pretty much lived her life the way she wanted…which of course made her notorious. But the French, surprisingly enough, loved their princess with the loose morals–and the arrangement between her and her husband, Henri King of Navarre (eventually Henri IV of France) where they lived apart and took as many lovers as they could handle was also surprisingly modern for a royal couple.

I am hoping to spend some time with Lou Berney’s Dark Ride this weekend. Lou has become one of my favorite writers and favorite people in the crime fiction community over the years, ever since that fateful panel at Raleigh Bouchercon where I met and made some new friends who also are amazingly talented. (I think Lori Roy has a book coming out soon, too–huzzah!), and I also want to make a plan to stick to for getting things done this weekend. The LSU-Alabama game is Saturday night, so that will require me to do some strategic planning. I just hope for a good game. Obviously my preference would be for LSU to win–that’s always my default–but as long as we don’t get humiliated I am good with a close and/or exciting game–emotionally exhausting as that will be. I know my anxiety was involved in this funk I’ve been in for longer than I think I’ve been dealing with it–me thinking it started sometime late last week is laughable in its naivete–but I need to get some things done and underway before i get derailed with the surgery. Nineteen days from today I will go under the knife. YIKES.

Which reminds me, I need to review my medical file and see what they say about the recovery period, or if it’s mentioned at all. And sometime before then I am going to get my teeth! Huzzah!

And on that note on this cold Thursday morning in New Orleans, I am heading back into the spice mines. Have a lovely day, Constant Reader, and I’ll be back later, okay, for some more blatant self-promotion.

Steppin’ Out

Wednesday morning and it’s cold outside this morning. It’s currently in the forties, and I turned on the heat once I came downstairs. This isn’t going to last long–I believe it’ll be back in the eighties for the weekend–but this morning going outside is going to be more than just a little painful, methinks.

I got off work yesterday and swung uptown to pick up the mail–the pothole at the end of the street finally resurfaced, and so my street is being resurfaced at the St. Charles end and is closed to access from that way, which makes getting home a bit more challenging than usual. I have to go uptown on the way home again today–long story short, I ordered a new lunchbox because Tug broke the strap on the old one, and it was overdue anyway; I should have ordered a new one long ago, and the new one is being delivered today in theory. It’s also the first of November, which kind of feels weird. This year has lasted an eternity already and yet here it is almost the end of the year already. I kind of feel in some ways like I’ve frittered the year away–and let’s be brutally honest, most of this year was spent working on things that were supposed to have been finished last year, and somehow nothing since those were both completed. Blame it on what? The heat, a difficult year, the injury, and everything else that seemed to go off the rails for me this year. Paul was working last night so I didn’t get a chance to do much of anything last night. I was too tired to read, and I also had an operating system upgrade to finish on the computer. It’s working in a most lovely fashion this morning, which is super awesome; upgrades have always worried me since the Great Data Disaster of 2018.

Which reminds me, I need to back up the back-up, as it has been a moment.

I honestly don’t know why I was so off last night, or how I managed to waste most of the evening. I started reading the new Lou Berney (Dark Ride) yesterday morning at the dentist’s office (oh wait, that explains the entire day being off, doesn’t it? I hate being so immured in my ruts of routine) and it’s quite good, although I didn’t get very far into it before it was my turn to get in the chair for the dentist. It was the final fitting for my new dentures, which fit snugly and tightly and look marvelous in my mouth. The next time they call me, I will come out of their office with my new teeth, which is very exciting. I am quite delighted at the thought of eating solid foods again. I also had to go out to the UNO campus to record “My Reading Life” with Susan Larson, who is always a delight and is one of the few promotional things I actually enjoy doing. And duh, that is why I was tired and off all day long; the usual daily routine was disrupted. I had to drive out to Jefferson Highway almost to Harahan for the dentist appointment, drove back into the city for work, then had to go out to the lakefront to UNO and back. That’s a serious disruption to my routine, and as I am learning, that’s the sort of thing that drains my batteries now.

But I greatly enjoyed this year’s Halloween Horror Month, even if the bad quality of the videos of Friday the 13th the Series on Youtube caused me to abandon the rewatch of that show for the month. We’ve been watching The Fall of the House of Usher, which has been a lot of fun and very well done, too–hopefully we can get that finished tonight or by the weekend. It was fun revisiting The Dead Zone, and the other reading I did this month was pretty awesome too. I am going back to crime fiction reading again, because the horror reading has been making my brain go into the horror direction, and I’m not really a good horror writer.

Yesterday Death Drop launched into the world–I’m going to do some more promotional posts about the book as well as some for Mississippi River Mischief, which is also dropping next week (this is what happens when you don’t make your deadlines, people–don’t be a Greg)–and it’s always nice when that happens. It sometimes feels a bit anticlimactic, and I am terrible about promotion anyway (doing it always makes me feel very self-conscious, which is something else i need to work on, because it’s also rooted in my anxiety). My anxiety has also been off the charts lately, and I don’t know why that is. The lack of an LSU game last weekend, perhaps, which served as another disruption to routine? I’ve also been studiously not answering my emails since last week sometime, as well, which is also not like me and another sign that the brain chemistry isn’t working properly again. But now that I know what the problem is with my brain chemistry (better late than never, right?) we are going to change my medications because I’ve been on the wrong ones, and come up with a different coping plan. I feel like I’m in the middle of yet another reboot of my life–new teeth, surgery on my arm, writing cozies, thinking about exercise and eating right again–which might be needed. It just feels like everything has been a slog for so long now; I do think it goes back to the Great Data Disaster of 2018, which started the whole mess. Or maybe it was the expense of buying a new car and having a car payment every month, which kind of did me in financially for a while (starting to see daylight again)–there’s no stress like financial stress, after all. Anyway, I’ve not really felt centered or in any semblance of control over my life for quite some time now, and I’m kind of tired of letting my life happen to me–which was where I was at when I was thirty-three and did the first hard reboot of my life.

I feel good this morning, rested and awake and alert and energetic and ambitious, and it’s been awhile since I felt that way. I may run out of steam at some point today–it does happen, after all–but I am starting to feel good again about a lot of things and when I can look at positives rather than be overwhelmed by the negatives…I’ll take that as a win gladly and keep going.

And on that note I am heading into the spice mines. Have a marvelous mid-week, and I will check in with you again later.

Sissy That Walk

Release day!!!! You can order it here, or get it from your local bookstore! Thanks!

And it’s Halloween, which makes it all the more perfect!

If you’d like to get to know the main character, Jem Richard, a little better, he wrote “A Day in the Life” post for Dru’sBook Musing that went live yesterday (thanks, Dru!!!). I like Jem, and had a lot of fun creating my accidental drag queen–because Death Drop is really the origin story of how Jem became a “killer queen”–a drag queen who solves mysteries.

I love origin stories, always have; which is kind of what Bourbon Street Blues was; the Scotty as a private eye origin story. The thing with writing amateur sleuths, which often can become a problem, is the unreality of it all; every day people rarely encounter murder mysteries, and real life murders usually aren’t terribly complicated (although there are some true crime stories and trials that beggar the creative mind), I used to call it the Jessica Fletcher syndrome–everywhere Fletcher went, someone died–and if she was visiting a relative that person would become a suspect. The show ran forever and the tie-in book series is also still going strong. (And yes, I am aware that private eyes mostly work on adultery and insurance fraud rather than solving murders…my mind isn’t always as logical as it could be.) I made a joke out of it in the Scotty books–he’s always stumbling over bodies–but I also didn’t want to do the same thing again in a different series.

That’s the problem with series–you want to be original with the new characters and everything. I had mentioned before how i wanted to write a new series only to realize the character I was creating was really just a mash-up of Scotty and Chanse. I was really worried about that with creating Jem, too–how to avoid making him a combination of my previous gay series set in New Orleans.

Like Valerie in A Streetcar Named Murder, I decided to make Jem of New Orleans but not of New Orleans. His father was born and raised there, but moved to Dallas after college and getting married, which is where Jem grew up. He spent the summers with his paternal grandmother in New Orleans; she had her own salon catering to upper class Uptown women and Jem loved hanging out in the Beauty Shoppe. I developed an entire back story for his childhood, but didn’t include most of it other than his parents are a bit uncomfortable with his sexuality and his older brothers were athletes…and he was not. His family was Mee Maw and her house on St. Roch in the 7th Ward…and when she died, she left him her house and he moved to New Orleans after a break-up and several years working in a high-end salon in Dallas.

Now, he doesn’t want to work in a salon again so he does glam for wealthy women, gets gigs working on touring theater companies, or films and television shows filming here. The income isn’t always steady, but when it’s there the money is good. I really became rather fond of Jem, and here is the scene where he becomes an accidental drag queen:

“How tall are you?” I heard Ellis ask from behind me as Tamponia String left my chair.

“I’m five five,” I replied, wiping the table clean with a sanitary wipe. “Why?”

“Please tell me you wear a men’s eight shoe.”

“I do,” I replied cautiously. “Why are you asking?”

“Turn around.” I did, to see Ellis looking me up and down thoughtfully. “You are almost exactly the same size as Trailor Swift.”

Uh oh. “And?”

“Trailor just called,” Ellis gave me a rueful smile. “She broke her ankle, so can’t make it, so we’re a model short—”

“Oh, no, no.” I waved my hand. “Sorry, Ellis, but—”

“Three hundred dollars? And you get to save the show?” He winked at me. “Trailor was going to wear the wedding gown at the end. Haven’t you always wanted to be a bride?”

“I don’t think I ever want to get married,” I retorted. “Seriously, Ellis, can’t you get someone else? You have to know someone you can get at short notice?”

“They’d never get here on time and we’d have to start late—Marigny would lose her mind and no one needs to see that,” Ellis said grimly. “Look, you killed on Fat Tuesday, I know you can do this.”

“But I don’t have padding or boobs or a wig—”

Ellis clapped his hands. “Queens, may I have your attention please?” Silence descended. “Trailor broke her ankle and can’t make it, but the show must go on.” He gestured at me. ”Jem here is the right size to fit into her gowns, but we need to get her made up and her hair done and she doesn’t have any wigs—”

Every eye in the room turned to me.

There was dead silence. I was about to decline the opportunity again when Floretta snapped her fingers, “Come on girls, we’ve got to turn this boy into a Queen!”

And they fell upon me.

And you know, with all the oppression being directed (all lies, as always) by the trash on the right (looking at you, LibsofTikTok; sorry you’re trash and no one loves you or ever will), it just felt right to center a new series on a drag queen.

I really like Jem; hope you all do too!

Dirty Laundry

Tuesday and soon enough I’ll be heading out to the dentist for my final fitting of the dentures–which means the next time I go, I will actually get them and be off this hateful soft food diet once and for all. I’ve kind of gotten used to it, though–but as much as I will miss the pint of ice cream, I can still have yogurt and the super-hot-and-spicy ramen on top of everything else. I think I am going to give myself to the end of the year–since I missed out on so much unhealthy food since the surgery–before I change my eating habits in order to be healthier going forward. The New Year will also be about six weeks after the surgery, so hopefully I’ll be in better condition by then to actually go ahead and change the way both Paul and I eat–Paul already eats much healthier than I do; so I just need to adjust mine a bit. But I can cut the ice cream out, as well as some of the snacking. Popcorn is really healthier, and it’s not hard to make, either. And I like it, just as I like pretzels, which are also healthier than chips (I think). At any rate, I need to spend some more time in the kitchen figuring out how to cook things I’ll like that are good for me.

And every once in a while, I can make Swedish meatballs or shrimp-n-grits as a treat…

Yes, because looking at food as a potential reward/treat is completely the healthy mindset I should have.

I’ve always had issues with my body and with food, for that matter; a lot of it stupid, a lot of it a product of my malfunctioning brain, and part of it from being, well, shamed for not being in the best physical condition possible. I don’t know when it all started, but I know when I was in high school–when I really started paying attention to male bodies–that I wasn’t built like other boys, and certainly not the ones all the girls were madly crushing on (for the record, I have never, nor will I ever, understand straight women’s taste in men), so I began thinking there must be something wrong with my body. I did eventually stop doing sports and so forth once I was in college, and that was also right around the time my metabolism slowed down from what it had been previously, so I gained weight–and I’ve never really been right in the head about my body and weight management ever since, I’m over sixty now, of course, and a lot of that body image stuff is in the past–but I do sometimes see pictures of myself and cringe at how big I look, which is patently absurd on its face and a mentality I need to get rid of once and for all. This soft food diet has helped me drop some extra weight–about ten pounds or so at this point–and I bet I lose even more after the surgery. Note to self: you need to buy a wagon to carry groceries in from the car, since you won’t have the use of both arms for a while.

It’s below sixty this morning and we’re having a middle of the week cold snap, even getting colder than fifty theoretically tonight. It’s also supposed to rain throughout the day. I am off to the dentist in a little while, so it’s one of those wretched days when I have to run all over town throughout the day, which is fine. I woke up this morning at five–and of course, Tug did his usual morning leap over Paul onto me and curled up on my pillow at around five-forty-five, waiting for the alarm so I would get up and feed him. He really is adorable, and loves to play like all kittens do; I need to buy him some toys, is what I need to do, and several laser lights because he got hold of the original one I bought and it’s disappeared, probably either under the couch or behind something. Maybe I should either swing by Petco or order something from their website to be delivered. I think he’d love one of those birds on a stick things; he was playing fetch with one of Scooter’s mice last night. But he’s adapted completely now to being our indoor cat, and he definitely feels like he is King of the Castle. He’s also curious about everything and still fearless, climbing under the couch or the dishwasher or wherever he can get–and he loves getting into the cabinets. He also broke my lunchbox yesterday; he knocked it off the counter after I packed it, and the clip for the shoulder strap broke. Sigh. I had to order another one.

I also got some book mail yesterday: Adam Cesare’s Clown in a Cornfield 2: Frendo Lives and Lisa Unger’s Christmas Presents. Lisa Unger is one of my favorite writers, but is one of those I always forget to mention when people ask me about favorite authors in interviews and things. I read some more short stories from Alfred Hitchcock Presents Stories That Scared Even Me, and they were okay; more morbid and weird than anything else, but interesting. One was “It” by Theodore Sturgeon, which was very peculiar and strange but was kind of fun to read (even though a dog dies terribly in it) and “Casablanca” by Thomas M. Disch, which was interesting; about an American couple visiting Morocco when a nuclear war breaks out between the Soviet Union and the United States, and how things change for them during that period, as they slowly lose their ugly American haughtiness and privilege. It was difficult to feel sorry for them because they were so awful and so used to their being American being a magic ticket that they become nasty and unpleasant as they begin to realize that being American means nothing anymore. It was kind of haunting to remember that paranoia we were so used to living with when I was a child; that fear that at any moment bombs would be incoming that would change the world forever; the American cultural obsession with nuclear doomsday when I was growing up was really something and popped up in movies and books and stories all the time. The one I remember the most (literature wise) is Alas Babylon, and the movies–Testament and The Day After. When I was in high school PBS ran a documentary about the possibility of nuclear war and what it would like; which was when I learned nuclear missile bases dotted the Midwest and particularly Kansas–the abandoned missile base just outside of Bushong in north Lyon County was actually mentioned in the show as a target despite being abandoned in the early 1970’s (that missile base shows up in my story “This Thing of Darkness,” and sometimes I think it might be fun to set an entire book there–high school kids exploring an abandoned missile base only to find something horrible and deadly there), which was all we could talk about at school that week–the morbid fascination that out there in the middle of nowhere Kansas we were still Soviet targets.

Ah growing up in the second half of the twentieth century was such a joy.

And on that note, I am going to get showered and cleaned up and head for the dentist’s office. Have a lovely Tuesday, Constant Reader, and I’ll check in with you again later.

The Girl Is Mine

I have always loved to read. I always escaped from the world into the pages of books, and quite often thought and/or believed that the world as it appeared in books was a much better place than the world I lived in. Being different from other kids, on top of all the other chemical imbalances and so forth going on in my head (hello anxiety!) left me constantly on edge; never knowing when the next unkindness or disruption to my life was going to happen. My parents worried often that I read too much instead of playing and doing little boy things–which never held much interest for me–but never knew that it was my life, and those societal little boy expectations, that I was trying so hard to withdraw from. I don’t know how old I was when I began realizing that the world was nothing like the books I read; and that interpreting and viewing the world from a perspective primarily gained from the reading of books for children–which were very much about establishing norms and behavioral expectations of kids–was a mistake. Even books for adults–which I started reading when I was about ten years old–didn’t really help me in dealing with the world.

But books were my solace and my job as a child, as a teenager, as a young adult, and even all the way through my thirties. I also drew comfort from rereading favorites over and over again; if I didn’t have the time to start something new I’d just take down an old favorite and reread it again. I recently realized I don’t do that anymore and haven’t in a while; on the rare occasions when I do reread something it’s a choice–“it’s been a while since I reread Rebecca, I should give it another whirl”–and just assumed it was because I have little time to read so I don’t reread anymore. That’s not the actual case; I could reread things instead of going down Youtube wormholes, but I don’t…because my life isn’t so horrible that I need that escape from it anymore and I don’t need the comfort from revisiting the familiar. This is progress, after all, and I am very happy about that realization.

But I digress. I read a middle grade ghost story recently, and it was exactly the kind of book I used to look for at Scholastic Book Fairs and at the library.

“Ouch!”

Ava peered at her fingertip, where a bead of blood was forming. She stuck her finger in her mouth and glared at the rosebush she had been hacking away at with a pair of clippers. Her blood tasted coppery on her tongue and made her feel sick. She took her finger out and pressed her thumb against the spot where the thorn had pricked her. There was a little sliver of black visible beneath the pale pink skin.

“You need to get that out,” Cassie said. “You could get sporotrichosis.”

“Sporowhat?” Ava asked.

Her sister swept her long, dark hair out of her face and tucked it behind her ear. She, of course, was wearing gloves. “An infection caused by the Sporothrix schenskii,” she said. “It’s a fungus that grows on rose thorns. among other places,” she added when Ava stared at her with one eyebrow cocked. “Named after Benjamin Schenck, the medical student who first discovered it, in 1896.”

“Oh, right,” Ava said. “Benjamin Schenck.” She pointed at Cassie with the clippers. “Why do you know these things?”

“I was reading up about roses,” Cassie said. “Because of the garden and the Blackthorn roses. It just came up.”

“Most girls our age read about pop stars,” Ava teased.

I’ve debated about trying to write for middle-grade readers most of my life. While there were books I enjoyed when I was a kid, as I mentioned before, the stuff classified as “juvenile” in those days rarely depicted kids who were anything like kids I knew in real life; often-times the books always featured kids who never broke rules, never got annoyed or frustrated or angry; paragon children that the authors wished real world children would be more like. (The Hardy Boys and Nancy Drew are perfect examples in their revised versions) I enjoyed the mysteries (and the historicals), but never could really relate much to the characters.

The Lonely Ghost isn’t one of those books, and as I mentioned earlier, had Mike Ford been writing these types of books when I was the right age for them, he would have been one of my favorite writers. Look how great that opening scene is–we meet the two sisters, get a sense of who they are and what their relationship is like predicated on how they speak to each other (sisters who love each other and are fond of each other but also are very different). This book follows the classic horror trope of an unsuspecting family moving into a spooky old house–either inherited, or purchased very cheaply–where they hope to make a new life for themselves, only to find the house isn’t what they expected. What we don’t learn about Ava and Cassie in that opening scene is they are fraternal twins–which is also incredibly important to the story. Ava’s more worldly and outgoing, a soccer star; while her sister is quieter, more studious, and into Drama Club, where Ava also ends up because they didn’t get her application for soccer in on time. But there’s something going on in the house that has to do with the previous owner–who also had a fraternal twin–and strange things start happening; and Cassie also starts acting strangely. Ava and her new friends have to get to the bottom of the haunting of Blackthorn House before it actually harms Cassie.

The book flows really well, and the girls–and their friendships–seem absolutely real. It’s been a minute since I’ve read something middle-grade, and aside from language and situations, the primary difference between it and young adult seems to be lower stakes in every way–no murders or sexual assaults or anything that might be too much for younger readers. It’s easy to get lost in the story because of a strong and compelling authorial voice, and the girls are all distinct enough within who they are and what they look like–which isn’t always the case–and it reads very quickly.

Mike Ford is the middle-grade authorial name for my friend Michael Thomas Ford, by the way, and yes, we’ve been friends for a long time but I also believe he is one of the best gay writers of our time and doesn’t nearly get the recognition or rewards that he deserves. I’m looking forward to reading more of these stories!

You Don’t Want Me Anymore

Monday morning after a relatively relaxing and stable weekend. I did a lot, mostly chores that needed to be done and reading, but it was also very nice. The Saints won their game yesterday, which was a very pleasant surprise, and we finished watching this most recent season of Élite, which I realized yesterday I’ve always put the accent on the wrong e, but it’s pronounced ah-lee-tay, so it made sense to me for the accent to go there.

Or maybe I’ve been saying it wrong.

Anyway, this seventh season was disappointing, as the storylines and the crime focused on parents rather than the students–which was a major error, I felt. The season did end with a murder–I’d wondered how long that character, an abusive and controlling lover, would last without being killed or redeemed; I got my answer in the finale–but the primary issue with the season is I don’t really care very much about any of the characters anymore. One of the show’s greatest strengths in those early fantastic seasons was how well the characters were developed (and the talent of the actors playing them) was that they were multi-faceted; even when they were being bad or doing terrible things, you understood them and why they were doing it so they were sympathetic. Now they are all just kids who bad things happen to who have no control over anything that happens or what they do–which is the problem. Before, in the earlier seasons, the kids had agency, and while originally the show was the Gossip Girl we all deserved, it slowly turned itself into Gossip Girl, which was fun but had little depth. A pity. We’ll stick around for the eighth season, which is the last one, while mourning its former glory.

Tomorrow is Halloween, and I signed up to make a cheesecake. The mistake I made was forgetting that I have to go to the dentist tomorrow morning before work, and the other was I must have gotten rid of my cake carrier during one of my pandemic decluttering purges, so I have nothing to carry it to work with–and I don’t like the idea of it sitting in my car while I am at the dentist. Going back home to get it after the dentist isn’t an option, either, because I am trying to spare paid time off as much as possible with the surgery coming, as I also have to run off to UNO after lunch to record “My Reading Life with Susan Larson”. Big day indeed. I guess I can just put the cheesecake into a box and bring it while still in the springform pan? AH, well, all I know is when I get home from work tonight I have to make a cheesecake and figure out the rest tomorrow.

These difficult life decisions, seriously.

I did manage to read Mike Ford’s The Lonely Ghost yesterday which I quite enjoyed; middle-grade books tend to read a lot faster than those for older readers and there will definitely be more on that to come. I will say for now that had he been writing when I was a kid, Ford would be one of my go-to authors, like Phyllis A. Whitney.

We also watched a hilarious (to us, anyway) movie on Prime yesterday, Totally Killer, which starred Kiernan Shipka in the lead of a hilarious mash-up of Back to the Future with a slasher movie playing Jamie, whose mom was the final girl of a spree killer thirty-five years earlier, who comes back in the present day to kill her mom. Her mom is obviously very into self-protection and more than a little paranoid–which of course makes Jamie even more sullen and distant. Her best friend is trying to build a time machine as a science project out of an old photo book, and for some reason the science fair takes place at an old, abandoned amusement park. Anyway, the killer kills her mom and chases her into the amusement park, she ducks into the photo booth and accidentally turns it on, and then the killer stabs the console with his butcher knife–which activates the time machine and sends her back to 1987, with a new task and mission: catch the killer before he kills anyone and thus save her mother–and with the benefit of her knowledge of the history, she knows who is going to be killed and where. A great plan, of course–but her being there slowly starts changing the future. It’s very clever and funny, and the juxtaposition of a modern teenager into a teenager back in the highly problematic 80’s and the cultural/societal differences are absolutely hilarious–especially to those of us who lived through them the first time. It’s light and fluffy, fun and entertaining and not to be taken terribly seriously. Also, because it’s Halloween Horror Month, I’ve been reading a lot of books that would fall into the slasher versions of horror–Clown in a Cornfield, Final Girls–so I’ve been thinking about the trope a lot lately too.

Maybe my next y/a should be a slasher novel? It could be fun.

And on that note, off to the spice mines! Have a lovely All Hallows’ Eve Eve!

Dolce Venezia

I love Daphne du Maurier, and I love Venice, so it is no surprise that one of my favorite works of fiction is her long story, “Don’t Look Now.”

I know I’ve talked about this story endlessly already, numerous times, but you can also close the browser window now if you don’t want to read me talking about the story more. If you’ve not read it and would like to, this is a good time to navigate away–because I am going to give spoilers aplenty in this entry–because part of the great pleasure of reading “Don’t Look Now” for the first time is all the surprises and twists and shocks.

Du Maurier was a master of the plot twist.

“Don’t look now,” John said to his wife, “but there are a couple of old girls two tables away who are trying to hypnotize me.”

Laura, quick on cue, made an elaborate pretnse of yawning, then tilted her head as though searching the skies for a non-existent aeroplane.

“Right behind you,” he added. “That’s why you can’t turn round at once–it would be much too obvious.”

Laura played the oldest trick in the world and dropped her napkin, then bent to scrabble for it under her feet, sending a shooting glance over her left shoulder as she straightened once again. She sucked in her cheeks, the first tell-tale sign of suppressed hysteria, and lowered her head.

“They’re not old girls at all,” she said. “They’re male twins in drag.”

Her voice broke ominously, the prelude ton uncontrolled laughter, and John quickly poured some more chianti into her glass.

“Pretend to choke,” he said, “then they won’t notice. You know what it is–they’re criminals doing the sights of Europe, changing sex at every stop. Twin sisters here in Torcello. Twin brothers tomorrow in Venice, or even tonight, parading arm-in-arm across the Piazza San Marco. Just a matter of switching clothes and wigs.”

“Jewel thieves or murderers?” asked Laura.

“Oh, murderers, definitely. But why, I ask myself, have they picked on me?”

It had been a hot minute since I’d reread “Don’t Look Now,” and rereading it this time was an incredible pleasure, as it always is. I originally discovered this story in her collection Echoes from the Macabre: Selected Stories, and was completely enthralled when I read it as a teenager.

This is the copy I found at Zayre’s when I was about twelve, and discovering duMaurier for the very first time.

That opening sequence between John and Laura is a masterclass in opening a long story, frankly. (Now, by the way, is the time to navigate away from the entry if you’ve not read the story but want to–I can also highly recommend the Nicholas Roeg film adaptation starring Donald Sutherland and Julie Christie.)

What do we see in that opening sequence? A couple, probably married and in love, having dinner at a restaurant in Torcello–and playing a delightful couples game in which you pick random diners at a different table and make up stories about them. I myself do this all the time whenever I am in public and alone; I just start looking around and making up stories about people based on their appearance and where they are and so forth. (This is an excellent exercise for new writers trying to hone their art and craft, by the way; take a notebook with you, have a meal by yourself, and pick out a table to observe, then start creating character and story based on what you’ve observed. I love doing this, frankly.) I also love that the opening three words of the story itself are also the title–as though “don’t look now” is actually what they call the game, and this innocent game actually is the first domino to fall in a series that results in tragedy. But du Maurier has already hooked us into this couple and their story, and we eagerly read on. What is this story about? Who are John and Laura? Why are they in Torcello? (When I originally read the story I didn’t know that Torcello is one of the smaller islands in the Venetian lagoon; but that soon becomes obvious.) One of the twins-in-drag gets up and goes to the restroom, and Laura, all in on the game now, follows her into the bathroom to see if she really is a man in drag, and there is much hilarious conversation between them about what might happen if it truly was a man in drag (and with all the bathroom battles currently being waged in this country, this scene took an an entirely different resonance in this reading), and we are left alone with John.

And once we are alone with John, we find out a lot more about the couple. They’re British, for one–safe to assume in a duMaurier tale–and as he sits there waiting for her to come back, he remembers why they are there; they’re touring Europe as a getaway as well as an attempt to help Laura (and John) get over the loss of their daughter Christine, who died of leukemia (this was changed in the movie to great effect) and Laura hasn’t been able to shake her sorrow, so John thought this trip would help, and this entire conversation–the resurrection of this game they used to play in happier times–has given him glimpses of Laura before the loss, giving him hope that the wound is finally beginning to heal. They have a son, too, who is off at school, but Christine was Laura’s darling and her favorite (I love that du Maurier would have none of that sentimentality about parents loving their children equally; she dismisses that nonsense out of hand. Of course parents have favorites. They’re human.) and so the loss is even more felt.

But then he notices that Laura has been gone a while…far too long for a quick trip to the restroom. And when she returns…

He could tell at once there was something wrong. Almost as if she were in a state of shock. She blundered towards the table he had just vacated and sat down. He drew up a chair beside her, taking her hand.

“Darling, what is it? Tell me–are you ill?”

But Laura shakes off the shock, and is radiant with joy as she explains to John the incredible encounter she had with the old woman in the restaurant rest room. One of the old women–the one who was staring–is blind but also psychic. She saw their daughter, Christine, sitting with them at the table laughing happily. John, of course, is delighted that his wife is happy but at the same time he’s aggravated at the woman–how very dare she say such a thing to his wife! He doesn’t believe in any of this nonsense and he is deeply irritated and annoyed that his wife–not really fully recovered from her loss–is so quickly taken in and ready to believe the story.

The desperate urgency in her voice made his heart sicken. He had to play along with her, agree, soothe, do anything to bring back some sense of calm.

Before, when reading this story, I always kind of felt John was kind of a dick. His wife is deeply saddened and depressed over the loss of a child, and he doesn’t seem to much care that he, too, has lost a beloved child. But this time through, I felt a pang of recognition there in John’s behavior; he was actually sublimating his own grief in that time-honored way men historically have–by ignoring it and pushing it away and focusing on taking care of his (so-believed) much more delicate and emotionally fragile wife; he has to be the MAN and take care of things, which is du Maurier’s sly way of inserting a critique of societal mores and expectations of straight white men. So, rather then processing his own grief, he buries it beneath concern and worry for wife, which isn’t healthy for either of them.

As John listens, horrified and appalled and even a bit angry, his wife explains to him that their daughter also is worried about them, that they are in danger in Venice and must leave right away. (There’s also a throwaway line that the psychic twin also mentioned that John is also psychic “but doesn’t know it.”) Naturally, she wants to leave while John, confounded and horrified by this turn of events–completely dismissing her out of hand, without the slightest bit of even trying to understand–will have nothing to do with their holiday plans being changed. Laura’s improvement in mood and spirit fades away and as they walk to have dinner, they become separated briefly, and he hears a cry from across a canal in the dark, and sees a child fleeing in a red hooded jacket, jumping from boat to boat until she escapes the sound of running footsteps behind her by crossing the canal by crossing over the boats. He and Laura are reunited, and he thinks no more of it. They have dinner, return, and discover that their son has fallen ill with appendicitis, and perhaps they should return. Laura sees this as the vision of the “danger” and even as John thinks about it, she goes about making the arrangements for them to get back to England. She gets an open seat on a chartered flight, and he will collect their things and their car and drive back. She takes off, he checks out, makes the car arrangements, but as he is coming back to the hotel he sees Laura and the twins, passing him by on another vaporetto. Disturbed by this change in plans, he decides to go looking for the twins, find out what happened and how they convinced her to stay, etc. eventually going to the police to try to track down the twins.

While at the police station, another British couple–there to report a stolen purse–tells him about all the murders going on in Venice that have the police so worked up; he thinks nothing of it, and then of course they find the twins who’ve not seen Laura–who also calls him once she has arrived in England.

Confused and upset and uncertain of what is going on, he goes out for another late night walk and once again sees the child in the red jacket running away. He himself chases after her to try to help her–only to catch her, find out it’s actually a demented little person armed with a powerful knife, who slashes his throat–and as he sinks to the ground dying, puts it all together–he’s psychic; he saw Laura and the twins together in the future when Laura has returned after his death to claim the body; and all along it was all right there in front of his face, only he refused to see it, thinking, as he last thoughts, as he hears shouts and people running towards him, what a bloody stupid way to die and proceeds to do so.

Du Maurier’s prose is, as always, literate and smart and brilliant; her characters seem absolutely real, and Venice springs to magnificent life in her hands. The structure of the story and her remarkable job at misdirecting the reader into missing, along with John, what is really going on around him in this Venice holiday is fucking brilliant. She gives John, and the reader, all the hints they need to piece it all together, but she is so completely into John’s head, his inner monologue, that the reader sees only what John sees, until it’s too late, and you realize this story never was what you thought it was in the beginning, or along the way; or that it is just not the way you expected it to be.

I’m already excited to read it again, and watch the film–a masterpiece–as well.