Tag: A Knock at the Cabin

This Used To Be My Playground

Monday morning of Malice week. Ugh, all the little things one has to do to get ready for traveling. Make a list of what to pack, take inventory of the kitchen to make sure Paul has what he needs while I’m gone, and so on and so forth. Heavy heaving sigh. But my flight Thursday isn’t super early; eleven-ish, if I recall correctly, which means I don’t have to be at the airport until around nine, which isn’t bad. I’m going to take some books with me to read for pleasure at the airports and while in flight; I will be editing when I can in my room periodically trying to get this revision finished by the end of the month. The weekend wasn’t nearly as productive as it could have been–there was another wave of depression and grief to be gotten through this weekend, unfortunately–but I did make some progress, which I am taking as a win. I did also make a to-do list for the week; that should help in some ways.

We watched A Knock at the Cabin last night, which I enjoyed; a lot more than I usually enjoy an M. Night Shyamalan movie. I had also enjoyed the book on which it was based, The Cabin at the End of the World by Paul Tremblay, who is one of our best horror writers today; I’ve enjoyed everything of his I’ve read thus far. The film follows the book very closely; it’s one of those claustrophobic horror stories where some city folk take a vacation in the country at a remote cabin–but remote and country are very much staples of horror; someone really should do a look at the trope of “city folk in the country” horror–and things of course go very south. The film is very well cast; Jonathan Groff and Ben Aldridge play Eric and Andrew, a gay couple who’ve adopted a young Asian girl they’ve named Wen and they make an adorable little family group. The location of the cabin is idyllic and tranquil and beautiful; the perfect spot for some city folk who want to get away from the every day and rest and relax. Wen collects grasshoppers in a jar because she wants to study them; the movie opens with her catching grasshoppers and then catching a glimpse of a very big man coming through the woods to talk to her. This is Leonard, played very well by Dave Bautista, who is the leader of a group of four people who have seen visions and have concluded that in order to stop the apocalyptic end of the world, they must come to this cabin and present the family with a horrible choice: they have to sacrifice one of their own in order to stop the end of the world. Are they crazy? They sound like it, as they try to reason with the family…but what if they aren’t? The movie’s ending is different than the book’s–there was no way they could film the book’s ending, really–but I do prefer the book’s ending than the film’s; it seemed like the inevitable outcome, and made the most sense. It’s a good movie, I do recommend it, but one thing I’ve always been curious about since reading the book and was only heightened by viewing the film: why a gay family? I gave Tremblay props when I read the book, because they were very real and didn’t seem forced or stereotypical at all; I thought it should stand as an excellent example of someone who is not gay writing gay characters. The politics of the representation–gays in peril–is one I am not going to give any time to; sure, the gay family was in danger almost from the minute the credits rolled, and it was nice having a gay couple to root for in a horror film. Horror by its very nature is disturbing and tragic; you cannot have gay representation in horror and then not expect the gay people to go through some things, you know? And having gay characters also adds another dimension to the home invasion situation–are they crazy, are they telling the truth, or did they target a gay family purposely? There’s an essay to be written about the book and the movie from a sociopolitical and sociocultural perspective, but I don’t know that I am the right person to write such a thing; I’m not an academic, after all, and have very little desire to ever be an academic.,.although that sometimes can explain my insecurities about thinking deep and heavy thoughts and wanting to write deep and heavy essays picking apart and deconstructing gay representation in modern fiction, with an emphasis on horror and crime.

I also read some academic treatises this weekend, one about being gay and the gay rights movement’s intersectionality and how it got away from that in the beginning only to circle back around to it in the present day, and the other about the television show Dark Shadows, which probably had more influence on me, my writing, and my preferences when it comes to reading, film, and television than anything else I’ve watched or read in my life. I know I used to watch classic black and white films with my grandmother (she was a big fan of the gay icons, ironically: Bette Davis, Joan Crawford, Barbara Stanwyck, and Katharine Hepburn; she also liked horror and noir, and she was a fan of Dark Shadows, as was our babysitter down the street, Mrs. Harris), so pretty much my course was set when I was a little boy–gay writer was my future. I should write more about Dark Shadows–I was actually thinking last night that I should write a memoir of being a writer; my influences and how they shaped my creativity and what I actually write–not that anyone would be interested in reading such a thing, of course; which is partly why I don’t write more personal essays. Just as I’ve never really been interested in writing a writing manual, or one of those Greg Herren teaches you how to write a novel things. I always feel like a fraud when I talk about writing; never does my Imposter Syndrome strike as hard as it does when I am talking about writing or teaching a workshop. I don’t know.

It’s back into the office with me today. It’s a light day for me; mostly busy work, like data entry, filing, resupplying testing rooms, that sort of thing. It’s always nice to ease back into the week with an easy day in the office. It’s also weird to know that I am leaving on Thursday morning; the trip doesn’t seem real to me yet even though I’ve already made plans to meet up with people while I am there. Looks like I’m going to have to take a Lyft or an Uber from the airport once there, which is fine. And then of course when I get home I have to make up for lost time with the manuscript. Heavy heaving sigh. It wasn’t a good weekend for working, really; I kept spiraling and had to finally, on both days, remind myself that my mental health was more important than a deadline and so focused on positivity and and worked when I was able to get things done. The house isn’t nearly in the kind of shape I would like for it to be in when I am leaving for a weekend (two in a row; the next weekend I am off to Alabama) but seriously–when is it ever? I just need to make sure everything is in order before I go away on Thursday morning. Heavy heaving sigh.

And my books that I’ll be taking to read with me are going to be That Summer Night on Frenchmen Street, Wined and Died in La,, Let Me Die in His Footsteps, and Monday’s Lie. I am not going to get through all of these, of course; I may even cut it down to two–like I won’t be buying books in the book room, please–and I will also be working on the revision while I am there, too. (I so wanted to be finished before I leave…)

And on that note, I am going to get cleaned up and head into the office. Have a lovely Monday, Constant Reader, and I will check in with you again tomorrow.

Rescue Me

Sunday morning and it looks to be a lovely day out there today. Yesterday, while I ran my errands, I was regularly amazed at how nice of a day it was, and how I wished I could take full advantage of it. It would have been a wonderful day to take a walk. Instead I was inside doing stuff and trying to get everything under control; the apartment mess, the book, and so forth. I have a long day in the spice mines ahead of me today, too. I also cannot believe that I’ll be at Malice this week; leaving on Thursday morning. I’ll need to make a packing list, of course, and I am looking forward to all the lovely plans I have for that weekend. I know I’m having dinner with some friends on different evenings, and brunch with another friend on Saturday after my signing, and of course Saturday night is the banquet.

I slept pretty well last night, and was already awake when the caterwauling began this morning. I stayed in bed for a little while longer after getting His Majesty’s breakfast for him, but finally decided to stop avoiding getting up and getting back to work. SO here I now sit, with a cup of steaming coffee in front of me, trying to decide what to have for breakfast. Toast? Cereal? A sausage, egg and cheese croissant out of the freezer? Or nothing at all, which is also always an option. I’ve also got some mess here in the office area I need to take care of this morning as well before I can really and truly dig into the manuscript.

We finished the second season of P-Valley last night, and got caught up on Yellowjackets, too. This means tonight we don’t have anything to watch–I am going to suggest we watch A Knock at the Cabin, and maybe the latest Scream is streaming already? I don’t know. I enjoyed P-Valley; I always kind of like shows about marginalized people doing what they need to in order to survive, as well as getting the occasional shot at higher stakes than usual. The next season is already set up so we’ll be watching out for that in the near future, but what I really want to see is the second season of Reacher. I did go up into the storage attic yesterday and found a box that can go directly to the library sale; alas, then I remembered I won’t be in town for the next two Saturdays so there was no point to bringing the box down. I also made the decision yesterday that I am most likely going to just go ahead and destroy my papers. I’m tired of having them around, frankly, taking up space and collecting dust, and no one is ever going to want to look through all that crap anyway. It’s all disorganized and scattered and in no particular order; who is going to ever have the time or inclination to go through all of that shit? And almost everything I have on paper is available electronically. There may be some things, some older manuscripts, that I no longer have electronic versions of anymore because the programs have aged out; old Word files and old operating systems no longer open with current systems anyway. But if I can clean out all that paper, and donate all those books in the attic, I can store other stuff up there and alleviate the clutter in the apartment itself. That is the plan for the rest of the year; and hopefully by December I’ll be able to close out the storage unit.

There’s a lot of files in my filing cabinet I can dispose of, too; I don’t need all my tax records going back to 2007, for sure (I saw them in there yesterday when filing away this year’s return) and do I really need contracts for short stories going back to 2000? Probably not. Anything where the rights have reverted back to me can certainly be tossed, and old file folders for ideas that may never go anywhere at this point might as well be discarded as well. I just really felt, yesterday, very strongly, for the first time utter and total disgust with all of this clutter and stuff. I’m thinking about it because of course my sister and nieces are helping my dad go through Mom’s stuff and things, and she was a bit of a packrat who didn’t like to throw things away as long as there was still a use for them–clothes and so forth, as well as papers; they found the receipt for the first washer and dryer she ever bought, back when we moved to the suburbs in 1971 and how pleased and delighted she was to no longer have to drag everything to a laundromat (kind of how I was when I got my first ones in 2005–there was something adult like about buying appliances, you know?) and realizing I don’t want anything to have to sort through all of this shit when I die; may as well make it as easy as possible for the survivors, whoever they may be.

Grim to be thinking in those terms, but once sixty is in your rearview mirror, you need to start thinking that way. How much mess is someone going to have to deal with when cleaning out my home? I’ve always been singularly unprepared for almost every life-changing thing that has happened to me; maybe I should actually prepare for this one. No worries, everything is still working the way it’s supposed to and while my working parts may not work as well as they used to, but overall I am still relatively healthy. And I am looking forward to getting back into the swing of regular trips to the gym next month as well.

And on that note, I am heading into the spice mines. I’m going to finish this, drink some more coffee, finish all this filing, and get cleaned up so I can dive headfirst into this revision. You have a lovely day, Constant Reader, and I’ll check in with you again tomorrow.

True Blue

Easter Sunday, which I keep forgetting about. Last year the day job changed holidays; we used to get Good Friday off (New Orleans is very Catholic) but they changed it to Juneteenth, which is better. That was how I always knew when Easter was because it was a three day weekend. Now that it’s isn’t, it’s just another religious holiday I don’t give two shits about. Even when I was a child, I wondered, how does the anniversary of the crucifixion and resurrection fall on different dates every year? It’s just another example of the falsity of the bedrock of Christianity, and really was just the Catholic Church absorbing and rebranding pagan spring celebrations and fertility rites–which is where the Easter Bunny and easter eggs come from.

Granted, these Christian fertility celebrations aren’t nearly as weird or frightening as say the ones in Thomas Tryon’s classic Harvest Home (which I need to reread), but still.

Now that I’m thinking about it, has there ever been a horror book or film written/made focused on how creepy Easter can be?

I’m feeling lazy today–not really a surprise, really, is it? I feel lazy every day, and always feel laziest on days when I have to do things I’d rather not do. I have to run out and make groceries at some point–probably this morning, while most everyone is celebrating Easter mass and so forth–and I also have to get to work on ordering my taxes for my accountant, which I keep forgetting to do. I slept really well last night–feel very rested and relaxed this morning–and I managed to get some things done yesterday. I got my desk area cleaned up somewhat; filing and putting things away and so forth. My electronic files are still a horrifying mess, and I don’t think that will change anytime soon because what I really need to do is go through everything, file by file, eliminating duplicates and so forth. Maybe when I have enough time accrued I can take a week long staycation and just work on things around the house like that and the storage attic.

I started reading Margot Douaihy’s debut Scorched Grace, and while I am only a couple of chapters in, I am already in awe of everything about the book. The writing, the characterization, the setting, the way the sentences and paragraphs are rhythmically drawn, like the best poetry–and the voice itself! Oh my God, Sister Holiday’s voice is so refreshingly different, vital, and new. The tone is very hard-boiled; imagine Chandler or Cain writing about a lesbian nun in New Orleans. I cannot wait to spend some more time with it today–even if it does make me feel like I am a rank amateur; truly great writers have that kind of power over me. It’s hypnotic and compulsively readable. The fact that the book opens with arson and a possible murder is even more genius; few things are feared more in New Orleans than fire. This book is a fine addition to the annals of New Orleans crime fiction, which is always exciting when you find a new such author.

We also watched Jordan Peele’s Nope last night, and it was really quite excellent. It was more suspenseful than scary, although that can sometimes be much worse and more intense. Who knew Peele would go from sketch comedy to being one of our best and more creative filmmakers with a strong focus on horror? I’m sure a film critic and/or academic can talk about Nope in a much more intellectual style than me; I don’t look for symbolic meanings in images and so forth. But I think what he was trying to do with Nope was not only to show how dangerous it can be to live isolated from the rest of the world (the vast emptiness was beautifully shot and displayed; the most terrifying thing about the entire movie was that feeling–which reminded me so much of Kansas). I’d like to watch A Knock at the Cabin tonight, or The Pale Blue Eye, or perhaps even both; I guess it depends on how much work I can get done during the day today. I honestly don’t want to do any, but that really isn’t an option.

Yesterday was kind of like that, too–I really didn’t want to do much, so I wasn’t motivated enough to get as much done as I would have liked or had hoped. Part of it was being on social media yesterday morning as I tried to wake-up and get my brain jump-started; people really are horrible on social media, aren’t they? The misogyny, the homophobia, the racism, and the transphobia can be a bit hard to take sometimes (most times, let’s be honest); it fills me with rage, which then triggers adrenaline, and when that passes, I’m tired and in no mood anymore to be productive. Social media is the enemy of all that is good and productive. I have always wondered why and how people have so much time to spend on social media. What isn’t getting done while you’re being a bitch on-line to people you don’t know, will never know, and will probably never interact with again? Who wins in that situation anyway? I know people say there are bot-farms and troll farms, where people in eastern Europe (Romania?) are paid to troll on-line? I can’t imagine that being a great job, although I would imagine any number of people would leap at the chance to be get paid to be an asshole on line; there certainly are plenty of people who’ll do it on a volunteer basis, for sure.

I posted the other day that, in wake of their state’s anti-queer legislation and since the racist conduct of said state legislature was on full display this past week, I had made the personal decision not to go to Nashville Bouchercon in 2024. I didn’t ask anyone to join me in not going; I didn’t proselytize or ask anyone to write to Bouchercon and ask for it to be moved; or anything else: I simply said I had decided that I personally cannot support any event in the state of Tennessee, nor would I feel safe if I did attend. That was it. Period. I don’t think that’s terribly controversial, really. I’ve always believed that it’s up to everyone to make their own personal choices, and the reasons for those choices are none of my fucking business (see how easy it is, evangelicals, to mind your own fucking business?). I also don’t judge people for those choices because I don’t know–or want to know, or need to know–the reasons they made them. Everyone is on their own path, and my path often veers away from the paths of others; I don’t want or need or owe anyone an explanation for my choices and decisions. If things change in Tennessee in the meantime I also have the ability to change my mind and attend. But I am not asking anyone to straight-splain to me why I should go, or try to change my mind. It’s kind of insulting and condescending, actually, for anyone straight to try to talk a gay man into attending a conference (or anything, really) when they have already stated they’ve thought about it and decided not to go because they may not feel safe. I am a sixty-one year old adult gay man. I think I have enough life experience to make my own decisions, and I don’t need anyone to tell me my thought and decision-making processes–thoroughly grounded in my life experience–are wrong.

Fuck. All. The. Way. Off.

I was also thinking a lot about my writing future yesterday, so the whole day wasn’t a total waste of not-writing. I’ve had an idea for a New Orleans crime novel for quite some time, but always thought it had to be told from the point of view of, well, Venus Casanova, and I didn’t think I had the right to write from the point of view of a Black female police detective. Well, maybe not the right, but the experience and emotional intelligence to tell it properly. But yesterday that story popped into my head again, and I realized I could tell it from Blaine’s point of view, her partner, who would and could have his own doubts about Venus and her personal stakes in the case. I even took it further and thought maybe Venus could bring the case to Blaine after she’s retired; because of her personal relationship with the victim’s family, and then my mind started spinning round and round and following the paths branching out from this re-centering of the point of view, which definitely seems workable. And I’ve always liked my character of Blaine, wanting to delve more deeply into who he is and his own history and path.

And on that note, I am going to read some more Scorched Grace in my chair until it’s time to go make groceries this morning. Have a lovely Easter if you celebrate, and if you don’t, have a lovely Sunday.

Material Girl

Saturday and all is well within the Lost Apartment. I slept really well last night, and woke up early this morning. I guess I slept in yesterday till eight so today my body was all “what the hell, dude? GET UP”so I did. My coffee is brewing, and I have a lot to do today. I have errands to run later, cleaning to do, and writing to do as well. Paul has his trainer later this morning and will probably go to the gym after; he’s been really good about that since the Festivals are now over. As soon as my toe is fine again, I plan on starting up again. It’s been over a year, and I think I can hang with returning to the gym again, testing out my left biceps, and seeing how long it takes me to get back into the groove. I need to lose some weight–I’ve not weighed in months–but my shorts are getting to the point where they don’t really fit comfortably anymore and same with my jeans; getting back into shape and starting to eat a more healthy diet can’t hurt, either.

I got some good work done on the revision yesterday; my goal is to get it finished this weekend and turned back in so I can get back to work on another revision I have to get done quickly. This one will require a lot more work than the other, so here’s hoping I can get it all done in April. I really do want to get these out of the way so I can go back to the ones I really want to be working on. I went down a Michelangelo wormhole this week, thanks to the stupidity of the David statue controversy, and I really want to write that book at some point–not quite yet, I don’t think; it’s also going to require another trip to Italy. Paul and I are thinking about doing an Amsterdam-Berlin jaunt at some point; I’ve always wanted to see both cities. I’d also like to do Greece and Spain before I die, too; Egypt is probably never going to happen (Mom always wanted to see the pyramids), but that’s also fine. Who knows? I could die in my sleep tonight, too. And of course, I have always wanted to go to France, too. Heavy heaving sigh. Ah, well. As little as I enjoy traveling domestically, not so sure how I will do on another international flight.

We finished watching season three of Outer Banks last night and it was terribly disappointing. I’m not entirely sure what went wrong with this season, but it was nowhere near as fun as the first two. Without giving spoilers, the treasure hunt that has been the basis of the first three seasons ends with the third; with a potential set up for a fourth season that’s a whole new treasure hunt coming at the very end. I’m not sure if the magic will return, but I suspect the writers ran into the problem that so many do; you have to keep going bigger, and eventually it becomes farcical. The writing was particularly bad in this third season; so much that didn’t make sense, and of course they wasted the first half of the season setting up the second half, which then felt incredibly rushed and nonsensical and stupid. It was disappointing, of course–we’d been looking forward to its return, too. Ah, well. Now that A Knock at the Cabin is streaming, we’ll probably just watch movies tonight; The Pale Blue Eye is also something I’d like to watch.

And what a night for LSU yesterday, as the women’s basketball team won to make it to the National Championship game for the first time in school history, where they will be facing Iowa. That game is tomorrow–I also think it’s Iowa’s first time playing for the national title–but I am not sure that I’ll watch. I used to love basketball, but stopped watching when they kept changing the rules to try to make it more exciting. LSU’s Gymnastics team is competing for a shot in the final four in that sport as well; not sure if they’ll make it out of the group of eight, but you never know. GEAUX TIGERS! And the baseball team is kicking ass this year, too. Looks like that athletic director that replaced the idiot one who went along with all the program abuses (I also like to remind people he was the same guy who blew the Duke lacrosse case) knows what he’s doing.

I also want to spend some time with Margot Douaihy’s Scorched Grace this morning (her last name is pronounced like Hawaii–only with a d. Doo-wa-eee), which looks fantastic. I am taking books to the library sale this morning, and want to do some more purging over the weekend, too. I’m starting to feel. like i have my life back again–the gym is the last piece of the puzzle to snap back into place–and I’m kind of enjoying myself again. It’s been quite a ride since Mom’s initial stroke–the grief still sneaks up on me every once in a while–but I also hadn’t realized what a subconscious weight her health had put on my shoulders. I don’t clench up and my stomach doesn’t knot when I get a text message anymore. I guess with all the other weight I was carrying around from other things I didn’t really notice? I think my compartmentalization is probably not as healthy as I would have liked to believe. But you know, you live and you learn. I’m realizing a lot of things now about life (mine in particular) and seeing things I couldn’t see before. I think the past few months, with everything going on with Mom and all the writing I had to do and the readjustments at my day job, was just so much that I just was kind of coasting along, doing what I needed to get by and trying not to get overwhelmed by focusing on one thing at a time. I also think, hard as it was to be a Festival widow this year, that it was probably good for me to have all that time in the evenings to myself. I could have been a lot more productive, but I think that was also part of the grieving process?

I just feel sort of like I’ve been asleep for a long time and have finally woken up.

And on that note, I am heading into the spice mines. Have a lovely Saturday, Constant Reader; I certainly intend to!

Doo Doo Doo Doo Doo (Heartbreaker)

Well, I’ve decided on my audiobook for the drive to and from Alabama this weekend: Carol Goodman’s The Night Visitors. Carol is one of my favorite writers (and has become a friend! I love my life) and I love her works; if you’re not reading her already you need to get on it–and there’s a healthy canon to dig into as well (always a plus). She also has a new book coming out this spring, called The Bones of the Story, which is a great title. I’m working on a short story this week while I am letting my novel manuscripts rest, and it’s definitely some slow going. I got about two thousand words into this story about a year ago, and I think it works perfectly for this anthology a friend of mine is putting together; I just need to finish the damned thing. But tonight I have a ZOOM call I have to do and I have to pack for my weekend in Alabama, and tomorrow morning I’m getting up, writing a post and hitting the road while listening to the divine Carol Goodman.

Does life get better? I think not.

It’s actually kind of funny; after I finished yesterday I realized I could, for the first time in quite a while, take some down time to myself for a minute or two without guilt or something looming over me needing to be done. After I sent the manuscript (such as it is) in along with my editorial thoughts and analyses, I thought, wow, I’ve sure written a lot since just before Christmas and showed an incredible amount of discipline–the kind of single-mindedness you’ve not had for quite a while, and I should feel drained and tired but I don’t. That was an incredibly over-confident assumption to make, even though it was true at the time I thought it. When I got home from work I realized my candle wick had burned down so far that it needed to rest and be replenished for a while. I am still feeling motivated and creative, though; I was simply drained yesterday. Before I went to bed last night (after watching another episode of The Recruit, which I am really enjoying) I kind of felt like the batteries were already starting to recharge. I feel very tired this morning, too–I slept well, don’t get me wrong, but I think I needed to sleep longer. Ah, well. I don’t have to get up before the sun rises tomorrow, so that’s something.

I always like Thursday nights.

But the kitchen is still a mess. I wasn’t in the mood to clean last night when I got home, either. I just felt disoriented, emotionally and intellectually spent, and physically tired. I used to call it the malaise, because it felt like melancholy brought on by the utter exhaustion of my creativity and drive to write. It’s very weird. Usually, the malaise also brings with it the feeling that I don’t even want to think about writing anything else ever again–which is not the case this time, which is very weird to me. I am champing at the bit to get to work on more things, new things, even to start working on the editing of everything else. It is very weird, and I will keep you posted on how this weird new version of malaise works itself out.

But I’ll have to clean the kitchen before the ZOOM thing tonight. That, or turn off all the kitchen lights.

Heavy heaving sigh.

I watched an interesting documentary on Youtube in my tired malaise last night, a new one from James Somerton called The Death of Queer Privacy, which was interesting. The primary focus of the documentary–Somerton does popular media critiques from a queer perspective–was, to begin with, about outing as well as the potentially problematic tropes in Paul G. Tremblay’s A Cabin at the End of the World and it’s film adaptation, A Knock at the Cabin. It was another look–deconstruction, if you will–if whether a straight identified (I don’t know how he actually does identify) writer centering a gay couple/family at the heart of a horror novel/movie is either good representation (they could just as easily have been a straight couple, a mixed-race couple, lesbians, etc.; sexual orientation didn’t play a part in the plot and if anything, the fact that the gay family was presented as normal and not a big deal tends to undermine any critical analyses of this as intentionally or unintentionally sinister) or if the book/movie, at heart, centers the trauma of a queer family as entertainment for the masses. I may want to watch that again; I wasn’t paying a lot of attention because I was tired and scrolling through social media on my iPad, so I may have missed some things, but the critique and look at the film itself was merely an introduction to the main topic, which was the attack on queer people’s right to privacy–which served as an interesting counterpoint to a lot of the public discourse about queer celebrities and how much of their lives, if any, needs to be shared with the audience. The recent forced outing of Kit Conner from Heartstopper is perhaps the best example of this; the idea that queer people in the public eye need to–nay, must–come out and be publicly queer, no matter how they themselves feel about revealing that much of themselves to the world, is problematic on its face. Somerton then went on to talk about how gossip blogger (and garbage human being) Perez Hilton essentially dragged a couple of people out of the closet. And really, are the personal and private lives of any celebrity any of our business? Simply because we enjoy someone’s performance in film and television, or like someone’s music, doesn’t really give us the right to know intimate details of their personal lives. I’ve never cared, beyond mere idle interest in hearing gossip; but I don’t care that much about it because I don’t know these people. What does who Taylor Swift is dating have to do with her music–other than her break-ups tend to spawn some amazing music–and why do I care? Why would I care who Tom Hiddleston is fucking, unless it’s someone I actually know? (There’s an interesting dialogue to be had about our billion-dollar celebrity gossip industry…) To circle around back to Tremblay, I knew he was publicly identified as straight as far as I knew (and didn’t care to know more). I was a fan of his before reading A Cabin at the End of the World (having greatly enjoyed A Head Full of Ghosts and Disappearance at Devil’s Rock–I’ve not read the others yet–and so I was delightfully surprised that the family the book was centered on was a gay couple and their adopted child. It was yet another entry in the “people go to secluded place and then horrible things happen” trope of horror, but with a remarkable twist that made it even more intense and terrifying. (I’m really looking forward to the film.) I read the book and enjoyed it, and I didn’t read anything sinister into it; but I was also reading it from an entertainment perspective rather than to gain a sociopolitical perspective for writing a critique…which now I kind of want to do, thank a lot, James Somerton–this is how this kind of thing always happens to me.

In fact, an essay exploring three mainstream novels by non-queer writers centering queer characters could prove interesting–and the Tremblay, S. A. Cosby’s Razorblade Tears, and Laurie R. King’s Back to the Garden would be the perfect trio to look at as they are relatively current, critical successes, and often award recognized.

And on that note I am going to head into the spice mines. Have a lovely morning, Constant Reader, and I’ll check in with you again later.