Tag: A Streetcar Named Murder

Who Dat Whodunnit

Who dat? Who dat? Who dat say dey gonna beat dem Saints?

I am a very proud member of Who Dat Nation, and have been since we moved here in 1996. I never really paid a lot of attention to the NFL before moving to New Orleans; I vaguely was aware of who was good and who wasn’t–and I knew very certainly that the Saints had routinely been one of the worst football teams, consistently, in the league since they were formed in 1966. You couldn’t not be aware of how hopelessly bad the Saints were, year in and year out. I always root for underdogs–a particularly American trait, I might add, which is another good essay topic (how we always root for underdogs, especially in our entertainment–film, television, books–but in the real world we either look the other way or actually pile-on. We all feel bad for poor bullied Carrie White in Stephen King’s Carrie and hate the cruel kids…but how many of us ever stood up for some kid being bullied in school? My experience as the bullied is NONE.)–and so I always wanted to see the Saints somehow turn their program around. Paul and I always watched the games–or had them on–when they aired; there were many times the games were blacked out locally because they didn’t sell out the Superdome.

Three things were inevitable in New Orleans: hot summers, termites in the spring, and the Saints would suck in the fall. When we first moved to Louisiana LSU was also in a downturn slump; some seasons they’d win, some they’d lose, but they were rarely, if ever, in contention for the conference title. I had a Saints ball cap and a Saints T-shirt, of course, but I was an idle fan of theirs for a very long time.

As with so many other things, my attitude towards the Saints was completely changed by Hurricane Katrina.

It was the best of times.

It was the craziest of times.

Well, what it really had to be was the end times, which was the only logical explanation for what was going on in the city of New Orleans.

Pigs grew wings and nested in the branches of the beautiful love oaks everywhere in the city. Some thought the pilot light in hell had gone out, so that icicles hung from the noses of shivering demons in the realm of the dark lord. Others started watching the horizon for the arrival of the Four Horsemen, for surely the Apocalypse must be coming. Surely the earth was tilting on its axis. Maybe aliens would land in Audubon Park, or the Mississippi River would start flowing backward.

Anything and everything was possible, because the Saints were winning.

GEAUX SAINTS!

People who don’t live in the South don’t really understand how important football is down here. Football is more than a religion in the Deep South. I’m not sure what it is–my mom claims it’s because the South lost the Civil War–but it’s true. On Saturdays, when the colleges play their games, the entire region comes to a complete halt. People live and die by their teams–whether it’s LSU, Ole Miss, Alabama, Auburn, Florida, Georgia or Tennessee–and how they face on Saturday. I myself grew up cheering for the LSU Tigers–even though attending Vanderbilt was a family tradition on my mother’s side. Whenever Papa Fontenot gives me crap for dropping (well, flunking is probably a more accurate word) out after my sophomore year, I give him a withering look and reply, “Maybe I’d have done better at LSU.

That always shuts him up.

I don’t think even the Saints organization knew how much the team actually meant to New Orleans until they tried to move the team after Katrina.

Everyone knows the Superdome was damaged by Katrina and the aftermath. I’ll never forget driving back into the city in either late September or early October and seeing it as I came around that curve in I-10 just past Metairie Road and the cemeteries; I wrote in Murder in the Rue Chartres that it resembled a half-peeled hard-boiled egg. One of the saddest things for me about seeing the wreckage of the Lost Apartment was finding my beloved Saints ball-cap lying on the rug in the living room and consumed by black mold. It seemed so symbolic of everything that had happened to us and our city.

Obviously, the Saints had nowhere to play home games and arrangements had to be made. Some games were played at Tiger Stadium in Baton Rouge, others in San Antonio–and San Antonio made it very clear they would be more than happy to give them a permanent home.

It felt like the Saints organization was not only stabbing New Orleans in the back, but the entire state. I know I took it very personally; the city had supported and loved that team through decades of mediocrity if not outright suckage, and now when the city is at its lowest point, they’re going to move to San Antonio? But the NFL wasn’t having it–Tom Benson always made it seem like it was his decision, but the NFL was committed to New Orleans and wouldn’t let the Saints leave. The Dome was renovated and fixed in record time; the season tickets for 2006 sold out for the first time in years, and the new Saints–with our new coach and quarterback–debuted on Monday night football against the hated Atlanta Falcons. I wasn’t even aware of it, I was paying so little attention to everything going on around the country and world, to be honest. I ran my errands that day and noticed Saints flags were everywhere and people were wearing Saints jerseys and there was this strange sense of excitement in the air. Paul and I were living in the carriage house and we only had this tiny little black-and-white television, but we watched that night. And when Steve Gleason blocked that punt and the Saints recovered in the end zone–we both cried as we jumped up and down and screamed. (Everyone remembers the punt, but the entire game was amazing from beginning to end.) People call the blocked punt “the moment Louisiana healed,” and maybe they were right about that…but all I knew was for the first time in over a year we had something to be excited about, cheer about, and be proud of–and the Saints made it all the way to the NFC title game, so close to making it to the promised land of the Super Bowl.

I’ve been a rabid Who Dat ever since (2005 I also switched my first college allegiance from Auburn to LSU, but that’s a story for another time.).

And that magical season when the Saints not only went to, but won the Super Bowl? I had to write about it. I had never lived in a city that won a championship before, and let me tell you–it was insane in New Orleans that season, insane–as were the play-offs and the Super Bowl. I cried when Tracy Porter picked off Peyton Manning in the fourth quarter and ran it back for a touchdown to ice the game, and I cried again when the clock ticked to zero and the impossible had finally happened: the Saints had won the Super Bowl. It was so noisy that night; cars were honking their horns all night long, the streetcars rang their bells non-stop, and people were just chanting and cheering all over the city. We could hear the crowd at the bar on the corner, we could hear our neighbors, it was just insane and celebratory. Paul and I to this day have regretted not getting dressed and heading down to the Quarter to see it all; when will that ever happen again? The Saint may win a Super Bowl again, but it will never be the first time ever again.

I remember later that spring a friend asked if I thought the Saints would be good again the next year, and I just smiled. “I don’t know and I don’t care. All I know is we finally won the Super Bowl and I can die happy, and I think a lot of us feel that way.”

The Saints are New Orleans, and New Orleans is the Saints. (I also am a little disappointed in myself for forgetting that A Streetcar Named Murder is actually set during football season; I didn’t mention it once and that’s a significant flaw in the book, honestly.)

So I decided to write another Scotty book, set it in that period between the Saints winning the NFC Championship and the Super Bowl so I could document that time, and I also decided to bring the other side of his family–the Bradleys–into the mix and give him a cousin who actually was on the Saints team and kind of a dick.

It was around this time, when I was planning or writing the book, that same-sex marriage was in the news a lot. Several suits were winding their way through the courts, and public opinion–thoroughly anti-queer in 2004 when it was on the ballot on a lot of states–was starting to swing back the other way. There was an incident at a beauty pageant when Miss California (her name escapes me now) was asked by Perez Hilton (who shouldn’t be judging anything, frankly) about same-sex marriage. She had to say she was against it, and even apologized, saying “I’m sorry, it’s how I was raised!” as the crowd began booing and jeering. She didn’t win, and I actually felt like it was kind of a shitty question to ask, but on the other hand, California had passed Prop 8 in 2008 (which was kind of the catalyst for the public opinion change, I believe). I also have always believed the old “it’s how I was raised” is a copout for bad or unpopular opinions–most white people are raised racist, after all–and questioning and reevaluating values and beliefs you were raised with is part of the maturation process of becoming your own person. But I was willing to cut her a break–she was young, it was a “gotcha’ kind of question, and kind of unfair–until she doubled down and decided to became the Patron Saint of Homophobia, following in the pumps of another runner-up pageant queen who became the face of hate and bigotry, wrapping it all up in religion and “concern for children”: yep, the hateful old bitch Anita Bryant herself, may she burn in hell for all eternity. She didn’t last long–its hard to paint yourself as a martyr for family values when you’ve been caught sexting (and recording yourself masturbating to send your man–and that was the end of that. I decided to make the reigning Miss Louisiana a homophobe who got that question at Nationals and is now dating Scotty’s cousin the Saints player–and he brings her to Christmas, with the end result that she gets slugged by Scotty’s mother and their family storms out.

And the night the Saints win the NFC championship, she’s murdered.

It was fun because I got to involve a megachurch in Jefferson Parish (there actually is one), and a sordid history of her own that the beauty queen was keeping secret for her own reasons–(coughs LESBIAN coughs) and even got to bring some more past characters back into the mix, like Emily who worked at the Devil’s Weed, and I had a lot of fun with this look into the other side of Scotty’s family (the one I am working on now also deals with another branch of relatives).

And I got to write about the Saints winning the Super Bowl, which was even more awesome. This was the book where I really thought I was done with Scotty. The year after it came out, at the next Saints and Sinners, was when I was asked if I would do another Scotty book; this was when I made my famous reply, “if I can figure out a way to include Mike the LSU Tiger, Huey Long, and his deduct box into a book, I will write another Scotty book.”

Of course, later that night it hit me like a 2 by 4 across the forehead, and I made some notes that eventually became Baton Rouge Bingo.

Brown Eyes

Sunday morning and another lovely night’s sleep. I feel rested and relaxed this morning–yesterday I still felt like I wasn’t completely recharged yet–so I think today will be a good day of getting things done for me. One can hope, at any rate. Once I finish this I have to start getting ready for my podcast discussion on My Cousin Rachel this morning, which I am not certain I am prepared for. I also need to order that Costco delivery I never got around to yesterday–I felt tired after running my errands yesterday, and my brain wasn’t really functioning the way it needed to be to write, so I just sat in my chair and watched Tennessee beat Florida (the one time per year I root for Tennessee) and then LSU dismantle New Mexico 38-0 last night. I’ve not checked other scores, but I don’t think there were a lot of surprises other than Oklahoma’s almost-predictable almost-annual loss to Kansas State. I’ve not been giving college football much attention this season, but there were an awful lot of almost-upsets yesterday, which should make for an interesting season the further along we get into it.

Tropical Storm Ian continues to slightly move his track ever-so-slightly more west, so the Cone of Uncertainty keeps drawing nearer and nearer to New Orleans, but it looks as though landfall is going to be Wednesday–and ironically, being on the western side of the storm means we will get some lovely cooler weather as a result. I hate that about hurricane season, and obviously I worry about people in Florida (although if I were a right-winger, I’d say God isn’t clearly happy with the way Florida is being run) while at the same time being relieved we don’t have to worry about doing without power or having to leave for this one….but just because we’re getting closer to October doesn’t mean we’re done with the season just yet–it runs through December, after all. Hurray.

I got my contributor’s copy of Magic is Murder, edited by Donna Andrews, Barb Goffman, and Marcia Talley yesterday, and what a lovely book it is, too. It’s always lovely to get a copy of your work in print, and as I am sure you’re been made aware by my endless self-promotion on this score, my story here is “The Snow Globe.” It’s another one of my New Orleans paranormal stories–I think there will be three of them seeing print this year (“The Rosary of Broken Promises” and “The Snow Globe” are already out; “A Whisper from the Graveyard” will be out soon) and I am in the process of writing yet another (“Parlor Tricks”) and developing still another (“When I Die”). It’s been a decent year for me and short stories, it appears, and I am hoping once I get this Scotty out of the way and finish the promo for Streetcar’s release that maybe I can focus on writing short stories again for awhile. I’d like to get those novellas finished and out of the way; there are three that are close to being finished and I think I can get them all published into one volume (those would be “Never Kiss a Stranger”, “Fireflies,” and “A Holler Full of Kudzu”–although sometimes I think the first and third might actually work as full-length novels ) and there are a couple of others I’d like to get finished in the new year (and how weird is it that I am already thinking about 2023?). I will probably also try to write another Scotty in the New Year (French Quarter Flambeaux is next up in that series) and I am thinking about maybe another Alabama book. And there’s also that romance I want to write, and the Leonardo mystery, and…

Yeah, I will never run out of ideas, I feel pretty confident in saying that.

We also finished Dahmer last night, which means we can move on to the new Star Wars show, Andor, which is cool because I absolutely loved the character in Rogue One and even though I know how he dies, I am glad they are giving him his own pre-Rogue One series. (I should watch Rogue One again at some point.) And a new episode of The Serpent Queen should drop tonight as well; so many riches to enjoy! And there are some other shows dropping soon that I can’t wait to see–both new shows and new seasons of old favorites (when will Ted Lasso be back? Anyone?)–and I’d also like to finish reading my Donna Andrews, so I can focus on reading horror for the month of October. October is also the month where A Streetcar Named Murder is set, so I should probably be doing some more promo this month to get ready for the release date in early December.

And of course, I need to get some writing done today around the Saints game.

On that note, I need to head into the spice mines so I can get the kitchen ready for the podcast. I am assuming that the podcast is merely an oral recording and not a visual broadcast, so I am not going to shave this morning…I may regret that decision in about an hour and a half. Have a terrific Sunday, y’all, and GEAUX SAINTS!!!

What Makes You Think You’re The One

And now it’s Saturday.

LSU is playing New Mexico this evening (GEAUX TIGERS!) in Tiger Stadium–it should be an easy win but when it’s LSU you can never take anything for granted–and I have a lot I want to try to get done today before the games get started. I have errands to run, Costco to order for delivery; it just never ends for one Gregalicious, does it? It would appear that way.

I did feel a little tired most of the day yesterday; not sure what that was about, to be honest, but there you have it and there it is. But I also got this lovely review in Publisher’s Weekly; another industry journal I’ve not been reviewed in for quite some time now. I am getting more excited AND nervous as time ticks down to the official release date…but it’s really lovely getting all this pre-publication love from industry journals, early readers, and bloggers. I’m quite sure I don’t know how to act anymore! I’m very happy that everyone seems to be embracing the book, which I thought may be a big departure from what I usually do, but maybe it’s not? I don’t know, I’m not the best judge of my own work. It really never occurred to me that my Scotty series was technically a cozy series–despite the weed, swearing, violence and sex–but Scotty, despite being licensed, never actually had a client (the guy up on the fourth floor in Vieux Carré Voodoo does actually hire him before he is murdered) but usually, he’s just going about his day to day existence when he stumbles over a body or some kind of criminal conspiracy. But when I got home from work yesterday I puzzled over that bad bad chapter, and so this morning I am going to try to get it fixed up once and for all before diving headfirst into Chapter Four. I have some errands that must be run today–and I am going to order a Costco delivery–and I also have some cleaning around here that simply must be done; but I am hoping to avoid the allure and pull of college football as much as I can today to try to get as much done as I can on the Scotty today.

I also did the laundry once I was home, and finished clearing the dishes piled up in the sink–which even now are awaiting me to unload them from the dishwasher and put them away once and for all–and once Paul was home we settled in for Dahmer, which continues to be disturbing and hard-to-watch and almost documentary-like in style, tone, look, and story. Evan Peters and Niecy Nash should each take home Emmys for their work here; Niecy is absolutely stealing every scene she is in, and Peters looks so much like Dahmer…it’s also disturbing to watch as a gay man who went home with a lot of people he had just met for the first time. It really is a wonder there aren’t more serial killers in the gay community, and they certainly wouldn’t have much difficulty in finding potential victims thanks to the casual hook-up culture always so prevalent in gay male communities (which has always been something I want to write about; either in essay or fiction form); a sort of Looking for Mr. Goodbar sort of thing only with gay men. (I should reread that book; I haven’t in years–not since it was a thing anyway. I was thinking lately I should reread all the “thing” books from the 1970’s–Jonathan Livingston Seagull, Coma, Looking for Mr. Goodbar, Jaws, Love Story, etc.–to see how they hold up and what, if anything, they have to say or can be said about the culture and society of the time and why those books, all so disparate, were so successful and popular at the time.)

I slept wonderfully last night, which is always a delight and a plus, and my coffee is tasting rather marvelous this morning. It is most definitely hitting the spot, that’s for sure. I feel rested and good this morning, which makes it a great day for getting things done. I am also thinking about taking my car to the coin-operated self-wash while I am out and about today (reminder: check projected path for Tropical Storm Ian; the one off the Cape Verde Islands formed first and took the name Hermine), and I also want to do some cleaning around the writing. We should be able to watch the LSU game tonight, even though it is on a lesser ESPN/SEC Network sub-channel, which is annoying–but I get it; LSU-New Mexico is a “who cares?” game outside of Louisiana.

I also spent some time last night with Every Frat Boy Wants It, my first erotic novel under the name Todd Gregory, and it’s not that bad. I realized that the three “fratboy” books I wrote are of a type, really, and rereading that long-ago written story (I would swear to God it’s been almost since I bought the new car, which was 2017, so it’s been about five years or more since I wrote it in the first place) made me realize that the concordance I want to put together for Scotty needs to be a part of an even larger concordance of all my work; all the different Louisianas I’ve written about and fictionalized over the years, which is even more important now that this Scotty is going to be driven so much by action outside of New Orleans.

I also need to revisit My Cousin Rachel at some point today before tomorrow morning’s podcast taping; I don’t want to rely on my ever-decreasing memory and should at least be somewhat refreshed in my recollections of what is one of my favorite Daphne du Maurier novels, possibly even more favorite than Rebecca. Big words, I know; but while I am certainly more familiar with the text of Rebecca, having read it so many times, I’ve only read My Cousin Rachel once–and came to it within the last decade or so, on the recommendation of Megan Abbott. I’ve seen neither film adaptation, tempting as the original (starring Olivia de Havilland and marking the screen debut of a young Richard Burton) may be; simply because while I know both films are very well-regarded, it’s hard to imagine a du Maurier adaptation finer than either the Hitchcock Rebecca or Nicholas Roeg’s adaptation of Don’t Look Now; with the bar set so high on du Maurier adaptations, how could either version of My Cousin Rachel stand up to them? I recently read a new-to-me du Maurier long story or short novella called “A Border-line Case,” and like all things du Maurier, it is rather marvelously well-written and twists the knife with something obvious that was there in front of you all the time but du Maurier pulls her usual authorial sleight-of-hand that makes the reveal startling and shocking despite being right there in front of the reader the entire time.

I also had wanted to spend some time with my Donna Andrews novel Round Up the Usual Peacocks, but not sure that I’ll have the time necessary. Ah, well. And on that note, I am going to head into the spice mines. I need to brew a second cup of coffee, and there are odds and ends around here that need attention. Have a lovely Saturday, Constant Reader, and I will check in with you again either later today or tomorrow morning.

The Ledge

And here it is, Tuesday morning and dark outside my windows as I have my morning coffee preparatory to getting ready for work. It’s getting to be that time of year where I drive to and from work in the dark, which is always a bit debilitating; you feel like you’ve spent the entire day at work when you don’t get to spend any time outside–even if just going to and from work–in the sunshine. The weather has cooled here a bit over the last week, which has been lovely (and early in the season for coolness). My back is much better–there’s still some tightness and slight pain involved–but I think i can actually head to work today and not be in the kind of pain I was in last week, which is kind of nice. It’s still there, but I am learning how to not trigger it–the irony of which is that I am having to use good posture at all times so as not to inflame the pain, which means had I been using good posture most of my life I might not have this problem right now.

But it’s something I can live with today; something I wasn’t so sure about as recently as Sunday. So taking the days of rest, with the alternating hot and cold, was probably a very smart thing to do. I will be taking the generic Ben-Gay with me to work today, too–just in case. But I can sit comfortably without it, which is something I can honestly say was not the case as recently as Sunday. And now of course I have to start digging myself out from under–which is a lot of catching up I need to get done. I also have to do some digging around and figure out what is missing from some projects that I need to get finished, and I also need to get back to writing. There’s an anthology deadline next month–more like three weeks from now–that I wanted to submit something to, but I seriously doubt I am going to be able to have the time or the energy to revise anything the way I want it to be revised to submit to this anthology, so I am probably going to have to let it go once and for all.

We watched Cold Blooded: The Clutter Family Murders last night, a documentary series about the In Cold Blood murders and of course Truman Capote’s famous book that was written about the case (which remains, to this day, one of my favorites) as well as the film made from the book (which I’ve never seen, but Paul’s friend the actress Brenda Curran was in, playing Nancy Clutter). I’ve been to both Holcomb and Garden City, back when I lived in Kansas and when I also had no idea Holcomb was where the crimes happened (I didn’t read In Cold Blood until I lived in California). One of the things I’ve always found interesting about these old rural crimes is how they always talk about how the “community changed” after it happened and how people never used to lock their doors…and everyone could just knock and enter other people’s homes. I wasn’t raised that way; my mother was very obsessive about always making sure everything was locked up–cars, homes, wherever–and used to get mad at me when, as a lazy not really paying much attention teenager used to sometimes leave the car unlocked. Paul is much the same as my mom; sometimes I forget to lock the car, and when I am home by myself I forget sometimes to lock the front door–someone would have to scale the fence, which isn’t easy, to get back to our apartment door–but that’s also a part and parcel of the false sense of security we all have about being safe in our homes. Once I am inside I am safe.

Which really isn’t true.

I spent some more time with Donna Andrews’ delightful new Meg Langslow novel last night while I waited for Paul to finish working so I could make dinner, and it’s delightful. I don’t know how she manages to do this with a series that has lasted as long as hers has; I think there may be more than twenty volumes in the series now? But each one is a delight. I love the town of Caerphilly, I love her family, and most of all I really enjoy Meg. I love highly accomplished, confident, efficient women like her; she’s yet another drily humorous main character in the vein of Elizabeth Peters’ Amelia Peabody and Laurie R. King’s Mary Russell (I really am overdue for reading another book in that series) and while my own poor Valerie is hardly in the same vein as these remarkable women characters, I’d kind of like to keep developing her into a series because, well, I kind of grew attached to Valerie and her friends while writing A Streetcar Named Murder, and I’d kind of like to revisit them again in another book. I have a title and an idea for the next book in the series, should Crooked Lane want another, and while I felt fairly confident they’d hate the title, I just this weekend came up with a potentially better title for it…and now that I am writing this, i cannot for the life of me remember what that title was, nor do I think I made a note of it (which is why you should always make a note of it).

Ah, well, perhaps it will come back to me at some point.

I also woke up to proofs of an anthology I contributed a story to that has been in the works for many years now, which means the book is finally going to be released which is great news. My story is called “A Whisper from the Graveyard” and I really don’t remember much, if anything, about the story because it’s frankly been so long. But I will need to proof it–check for typos and missing words and such–which will be a nice way to get reacquainted with the story, at the very least. I vaguely have some idea about the story–I know it’s a private eye story, with a gay detective who has just tested HIV positive and it’s set in the early 1990’s, so it’s a death sentence as far as he knows–and is hired by someone to find someone else? I don’t remember–it really has been a long time since I wrote this story.

But I am also completely overwhelmed with work and being behind on everything and I really need to start making a to-do list so I can sort all this shit out and get things done that need to be done. I know I need to go back to work on Scotty and my other project; there’s any number of other things I need to get done, and I also need to start figuring out promo for A Streetcar Named Murder else no one will buy it and that will be the end of that.

The great joy of being a writer.

And on that note, I am heading into the spice mines. Happy Tuesday everyone (except Buccaneer fans)!

World Turning

Wednesday and Pay the Bills Day yet again. Huzzah?

Whatever, bill BASTARDS!

I also woke up this morning to a lovely review of A Streetcar Named Murder in Library Journal; what a lovely way to start the morning even before I’ve had my first sip of coffee. I can’t remember the last time I was reviewed there, if at all; I think my Scotty books with Kensington (the first three, in other words) were reviewed by LIbrary Journal, but it’s also been a hot minute since the release of Mardi Gras Mambo–Fat Tuesday, 2006, to be exact–so I don’t think it’s too beyond if I don’t remember.

Yesterday was a very busy day at the office; we were short-staffed during walk-in testing to I had to pitch in and help out, which put me behind with my appointments and got me out of there later than I usually get out of the office. I’d planned to run uptown to get the mail, but I was pretty worn down by the end of my shift (oh, yes, everyone showed up for their appointments as well, which never happens; there’s always at least one no-show every day) and so decided simply to drive straight home, especially since there was inclement weather; the air felt like with maybe one more degree of humidity the air would turn to mist or water or something–which is par for the course in late August in New Orleans. I always forget, from year to year, how dreadful late August can be and that the heat/humidity generally doesn’t break until about a week after Labor Day. It’s been so miserably hot for so long already this year that it wouldn’t surprise me in the least if the summer heat lasted all the way until October this year. I didn’t write at all yesterday either, because when I got home I was drained, as I said. I didn’t even have the energy to do the dishes or anything around the house–which of course made Scooter enormously happy, since i just collapsed into my easy chair and made a kitty lap-bed for him almost as soon as I changed out of my work clothes. I’d slept well Monday night–I did again last night–but like I said, sometimes my clients require a lot of assistance and yesterday was one of those days, so I was tired by the time I got out, and it was later than usual, too.

I like it when my clients require assistance from me. I mean, it’s my job, and I like knowing when the appointment is over that I’ve helped them in some way–whether it’s easing their mind, helping them strategize how to reduce their risk of infections, and giving them a plan for what to do if they think they’ve put themselves at risk. It was also a pleasant reminder of how and why I love my day job. Maybe one of these days I’ll talk about my day job; maybe on my next work anniversary, this coming January when it will mark eighteen (!!!) years of my employment there.

I did watch Rafa play his US Open match last night; having Serena retire after this tournament made me also recognize that soon he, Roger Federer, and probably Novak Djokovic as well as Andy Murray will all be retiring from the sport. It’s the end of an era–an era of giants in tennis. Will we ever have a span like this, with so many great top-tier players in the sport ever again? Between them all–Serena, Venus, Roger, Rafa, Djoker, and Andy–they account for over 100 grand slam titles since 1999. That’s fucking incredible, especially when you figure there have only been about 172 titles awarded in that same time period. That’s pretty fucking impressive.

But I slept very well last night, and feel rested this morning. I don’t want to jinx anything but I’ve been consistently getting good sleep pretty regularly now, and I think it’s changing my perspective. I know having COVID changed something in my brain–I know when I came out of it I felt more rested than I had in I don’t know how long, and my brain had kind of reset. My memory is still shot–I asked a co-worker a question yesterday that I already knew the answer to but had completely forgotten which resulted in a very weird look and you knew that already and of course, once I’d heard the answer I was like d’oh, you’re right, I did know that, sorry. But I feel better emotionally, if that makes any sense, and I feel like whatever malaise/funk or whatever you want to call it that I’ve been in since the pandemic shutdown was finally lifted after I actually had the goddamned plague.

And on that note, I am heading into the spice mines. Happy Wednesday, Constant Reader, and I will check in with you again later.

Blue Letter

Friday!

I’m not certain why waking up on Friday makes me happy–or as happy as one can be when going through the tedious process of waking up from slumber–but I am sure it has to do with a light day at the office and then two days at home that are free (well, free from the day job, at any rate; I work all weekends as it is), and of course I will have errands to run as always, writing to do, laundry and dishes to clean up, etc etc etc. I want to finish reading Gabino’s book this weekend, and of course I want to write and do some other things as well. It rained overnight–a quite marvelous thunderstorm–and it’s still rainy and damp this morning now that I have arisen. It felt rather marvelous to sleep last night. There’s really nothing like rain/thunderstorms to help one sleep when one is buried beneath a pile of comfortable and very warm blankets.

I did work on Mississippi River Mischief some last night–the first chapter wasn’t nearly as bad as I thought it was, but it needed some fixing and things and so I was more than happy to add about a thousand words to it as well as clean some of it up. I also recorded a video for an on-line conference for A Streetcar Named Murder. I had to clean off my desk and straighten up the kitchen in order to get it done, but it wasn’t as bad as I thought it would be to do, and I didn’t even mind seeing myself on video or hearing the recording of my voice as much as I usually do. Which was nice, of course–the initial shock of seeing how much older I look than I think I look seems to not be as great as it used to be. Acceptance? A final loss of vanity? Who knows? But it wasn’t as big an ordeal or as terrible as I feared it would be (few things ever are as terrible as I worry they will be, thanks to my vivid imagination). It’s also interesting to start transitioning into promo mode for A Streetcar Named Murder, which should be kind of different and fun than what I am used to experiencing when it comes to book promo.

I’m feeling good this morning, and my coffee is hitting the spot, and everything feels right, which is always a little unsettling for me as I inevitably wait for the other shoe to drop that is going to fuck everything up. It has always been my experience in life that there’s always another shoe about to drop. We finished watching one of the Fyre Festival documentaries last night–the Netflix one rather than Hulu, Fyre: The Greatest Party That Never Happened. As someone who has done event planning, and is married to someone who basically has been an event planner since 1998, oh my God, how we both were cringing. Sure, we had hindsight, but…as we watched as the disaster unfolded and the guests started arriving into the mess that had been created, one of the people involved with it kept talking about how, right up until the last minute, the guy in charge–Billy something, who actually turned out to be a sociopathic schemer–kept thinking and believing and convincing everyone that it would somehow all come together and work out at the last minute. I turned to Paul and said, “what’s really frightening about this is knowing I’ve been that person many many times, oh, it’ll all come together while not being entirely sure that it will but thinking that because it always has before. Have you ever felt like that?”

And he replied, “every weekend before the Festival starts I basically have a panic attack.”

No matter how many lists you make, no matter how much attention you pay, no matter how many reminder notes you scribble down somewhere, there’s always this fear that you forgot something important that’s going to rise up and bite you in the ass at the worst possible time. It always reminds me of that bit from The Shining about the boiler–“that what was forgotten” (although I knew in the beginning of the book, when the hotelier spent so much time explaining the boiler to Jack, that at some point it was going to blow the entire hotel to smithereens–SPOILER, sorry!).

In fact, I had completely forgotten that I had chaired World Horror Con in New Orleans whatever year that was; 2014? 2015? 2013? It really wasn’t terrible, but all those spinning plates…but I was cautious and careful and made sure nothing went awry, and overall it ran relatively smoothly. Funny that I had forgotten about that. Is it my age and getting older that has damaged my memory so badly? Or is it that the older you get the more you have to remember, so there’s limited room in my memory banks so things get stored deeper in my brain and aren’t as easily accessible? That’s better and easier to believe than my memory is faltering and synapses are no longer firing.

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

Everybody Loves You

Monday morning, and the shopping days left till my birthday are slowly but surely getting crossed off my calendar. Yesterday was a lovely relaxing day at home; I did some on-line shopping (ordered a new pair of glasses from Zenni; we’ll see how they work out once they arrive; I may order a few other pairs to be more color-conscious; and yes, I know how weird that is for me–I didn’t get the fashion gene that most gay men seem to be born with, and so I’ve never really cared much about clothes other than their function–especially glasses

) and then spent some time doing the fun part of writing: thinking about the book(s).

I love that part. I actually realized yesterday that I was flying without a navigator (as usual), which is probably a mistake. I hadn’t spent any time really thinking about the story of Mississippi River Mischief and how it would impact the characters and how they interact with each other, etc. I had some basics down; I knew how I was going to start the story and open the book, and what I was going to include in it–I also recognized that another subplot is too big a story to be included in this book, and so I had to put it to the side for now, for use at a later date in a different book. But beyond that I hadn’t really thought much about it, and that was problematic for me and would inevitably cause problems for me down the line as I struggled to write a strong first draft. I also realized that a lot of what I was writing was going to take place outside of New Orleans, and yes, I know it’s anal of me, but my fictional Louisiana was far too amorphous. My work has always centered New Orleans and I’ve always been a stickler about getting that correct–I know I’ve made mistakes, I got Orleans and St. Louis Streets reversed in one book, or example– but over the course of forty-odd books, inevitably parts of some of them had to take place outside New Orleans. (I had, oddly enough, no qualms about completely fictionalizing the entire state of Louisiana for the most part outside of the metro area.) And being anal, I realized I had no real “map” or idea of what fictional parish or city or plantation was where and what names I’d used where and so on and so forth. And yes, I know it probably doesn’t matter–no reader would ever take the time to go through all of my books and try to piece Greg’s fictional Louisiana together and point out contradictions and errors, but it would bother me knowing that it was a mess outside Orleans and Jefferson parishes.

Something clearly had to be done.

So, I spent yesterday afternoon doing Scotty research–namely, checking every book I’ve ever written with scenes that take place outside of the metro area and try to assemble all of those places into a coherent and cogent “world” of Louisiana, strictly of my own making. I did allow myself to get sidetracked a few times with research into other projects, current or upcoming (the Great Hurricane of 1915, and the legend of Julia White were Internet wormholes I happily went down yesterday; I think a story I am going to write for an anthology call will be based in these two events), which is always a delight; Louisiana and New Orleans history are literal treasure troves for thoughts and ideas and so forth (another wormhole: the German Coast of the Mississippi River) and also humbling at the same time, because these wormholes always remind me how little I actually do know and understand about New Orleans and Louisiana.

Revisiting old books–especially Scotty ones–inevitably bring back memories of the time period in which the book was written, where the idea for it came from, what I was trying to do with it, and so on and so forth…not to mention how the character himself has changed and grown along with my writing styles and skills. It also reminds me of other things, too–plans I used to write the books, ideas and thought processes for the characters and their futures, and so on; things I had forgotten over the passage of time. I also sent the pdf of Jackson Square Jazz to my iPad; so I can slowly start copy-editing it so I can put up the ebook on Kindle at long last–there was also a part of that novel, part of Scotty’s long-forgotten past that only appears in this particular book that I want to circle around back to for this one. There are, I suspect, any number of sub-plots and character arcs that have been left hanging within the series over the years, and I don’t think it’s such a bad idea to reread the entire series again from start to finish since I am writing another book in the series. Obviously, I love Scotty and he is a part of me, and I don’t have a hard time slipping into his voice again (one of the things, I think, that makes writing a series a bit easier than writing a stand-alone–or starting a new series–is that ease of finding the character’s voice again. I’ve written eight Scotty books now, it should be easy to find his voice again), but there are a lot of other things I need to revisit and remember from the previous books in the series, so as to avoid continuity issues and things like that which plague me constantly.

For the record, the books I had to consult to map out my fictional Louisiana included not only Scotty books, but Murder in the Arts District (Chanse), The Orion Mask, a pseudonymous book or two, and some short stories. If A Streetcar Named Murder indeed becomes the launch of a new series for me, I’ll need that fictional map of Louisiana for that series as well–I’d already brought up one of my fictional parishes in the text of Streetcar, so…

I also reread the first four chapters of something else that is currently in progress to also kind of sort of make sense of it as well (and a good thing, too–I had two completely different sleazy gay dive hustler bars in the same neighborhood in two different chapters; easy enough to fix of course, and another continuity issue). This is going to sound weird–what else is new with one Gregalicious–but I am writing another book at the same time as this Scotty; I am sending a chapter a week to a friend, kind of like a serial novel, but I had not gone back and reread what I had already written on it (hence the two sleazy gay hustler bars in the same area of the fictional city) and so it went off the rails slightly (I suspected it was doing so and even remarked on it when I sent the email with the most recent chapter attached), and I am going to have to go back and clean that all up before proceeding–because it’s too big of a mistake to leave in the draft for correcting in another, later draft (plus, it will bother me to no end knowing those big mistakes are there), so I think I am going to have to make those fixes before I write Chapter 5–which is a good thing, because I am not really sure how to write chapter 5 or what to do in it; revisiting and fixing the first four chapters is always a good idea in these situations.

The problem with not outlining is because sometimes you get stuck.

We also binged a lot of The Sandman last night. What an extraordinary show–the visuals are absolutely stunning (I keep thinking how visually breathtaking it would be on the big screen), and the costumes, the art and set design, everything is just stunningly perfect, and the stories themselves (as well as the over-arcing storyline) are depicted and acted and written beautifully. This is the adaptation of the series I always wanted to see but never dared dream we would get; Paul and I are both just completely blown away by its brilliance (I also loved that Cain and Abel, from the old comics House of Mystery and House of Secrets, are a part of this universe; I loved those comics back when I was a kid–note to DC: make an anthology series of both of those comics, please.) We only have three episodes left, but by the time we finish this show–probably Wednesday, given how our weekday evenings seem to go–there should be some other amazing shows dropped for us to watch–I am particularly looking forward to The Serpent Queen; I’ve been asking for a Catherine de Medici series for years and now we are getting one that seems to embrace and encompass her manipulation and dedication to the acquisition of power, and of course House of the Dragon looks like it could be very fun, and other shows will be returning soon as well with new episodes.

So, overall it was a great weekend; I cannot complain. It was productive–perhaps not as productive as I would have liked, but I do feel like some seriously good work was done this weekend, and that’s all that matters. I have some work-at-home duties today–trying to decide whether to run errands today or on the way home from work tomorrow (on the way home is currently winning the debate in my head), and about the only real disappointment in the weekend was not being able to make time to read.

And on that note, I am heading into the spice mines. Have a lovely Monday, Constant Reader, and I’ll check in with you again later or tomorrow; depends on when I finish writing these other blog posts that are more essay-driven than the norm.

It’s Only Love

AH, insomnia. It’s been a hot minute since you stopped by for a visit, thank you.

At least I slept for a good four or five hours before I woke up around three this morning and wasn’t able to really fall back asleep. I have a longish day ahead of me, too, and I can’t really afford to be tired and sleepy and groggy. I’m not right now–I’m wide awake–but this afternoon I am going to run out of steam. I am getting trained on how to give monkeypox vaccines today–I don’t know that I will actually have to do it; I was a little confused by the messages I was getting from the department head yesterday, but then again being able to give vaccines is a training that could be useful for me, especially as pandemics and epidemics seem to be the thing nowadays. I also assume that, if I am going to be administering them, I’ll be getting one as well? It’s weird, I am not sure how it works, and I am not going to be googling anything before I actually have my training; but I’d assumed it was a two-shot protocol–but who knows?

I got a lot done yesterday, actually. I got all my day job work caught up, and then I spent the evening proofing the pages for A Streetcar Named Murder, and then wrote up the acknowledgements and the dedication and sent them off to my publisher in the early evening. Now I have to do the page proofs for the Bouchercon anthology and do the edits on a short story, and then I am all caught up and can get back to work on writing again. Whew.

I got up early yesterday to go have blood drawn done for my bi-annual lab work, which kind of messed with my mindset a little bit for the rest of the day, but overall I think it was a good day, really. I let Imposter Syndrome out from behind its locked door in my brain for a while last night and went into a bit of a spiral as we watched the latest episode of The Anarchists and got further into the third season of Control Z–which I am not really following; it’s hard for me to remember which characters are which–that has a lot to do with COVID brain, though, I think. It’s hard for me to remember shows we’ve binged because we’ve binged so many over the past three years, and Control Z, which has shorter episodes (slightly longer than half an hour) makes it harder to connect with and remember characters and their story arcs when they aren’t really the main one, if that makes sense? The episode we watched last night ended with a surprise twist in that Pablo might be the hacker….but we couldn’t remember which character was Pablo. See what I mean about it being a problem?

We’re having a thunderstorm currently, which means dashing out to the car while carrying everything and an umbrella, fumbling to unlock the gate, etc. It also means we’re probably going to have flooding this morning as well–that’s what rain usually means in New Orleans during the summer–and also means my feet will most likely get wet (which is why I always have spare socks in one of my desk drawers at the office; there’s nothing worse than wet socks during the work day). Yay. This is the kind of weather than makes me want to stay in bed; one of these mornings when it’s raining on the weekend I am going to come down and get my coffee and go back up to bed to read while it rains, which is one of my favorite things in the world to do but I’ve not been able to do for a very long time, which kind of sucks, really. Simple pleasures are often quite marvelous and endlessly good for the soul–which is one of the reasons I love sleep (when I’m able to get it) so much.

And yes, one of the things I have to do this morning is make a fresh to-do list, and go from there.

And on that note, I am going to finish my peanut butter toast and get cleaned up for work. Have a lovely Tuesday, Constant Reader, and I will check in with you again tomorrow.

That Made Me Stronger

Monday morning has rolled around again, and this morning I had to get up ridiculously early to go have blood drawn for my biannual check-up–I find it easier to just get up early, brush my teeth, wash my face, and throw on some clothes to run down there before eating or drinking anything (must fast before bloodwork; therein lies the rub) before rushing out to the car where my travel mug rests with my first cup of coffee in it. That first swallow of coffee is always so blissful once the three vials of blood have been taken from my arm.

I finished all the copy edits of the Bouchercon anthology in order to get it turned in (late) last evening; that was quite an experience–but it’s a great anthology. There are some terrific stories from writers you know and writers you may not have heard of yet, but you’ll be delighted to make their acquaintance here. I am hoping to get the page proofs this week so I can get that out of the way–after I finish work tonight I have to finish the proofing for Streetcar–and am feeling a bit weird this morning that it’s now August. (Nineteen shopping days left before my birthday, Constant Reader, so make a note of that, okay?) I also did laundry and dishes yesterday; went over that story one last time and decided to bite the bullet and submit it anyway–if it’s offensive or tone deaf, they won’t use it, after all; ordered groceries on line to be picked up tomorrow night after work; and did some more cleaning around here. I also finished reading Sandra SG Wong’s In the Dark We Forget, which I greatly enjoyed and already blogged about, and started reading Curtis Ippolito’s Burying the Newspaper Man at long last. I’ve also picked up some more books to read along the way somehow, and more are coming that were preordered.

I will never finish reading everything I want to read, just like I will never write everything I want to write.

I did get some writing done over the weekend, though–all this proofing and copy editing and so forth haven’t exactly made it the easiest thing to do, seriously–and I have to get the edits/revisions done on another story that’s been accepted; it’s being edited as a google doc, which I don’t have a lot of experience with and so I am not sure what I am looking at, which is always fun; I hate being technologically challenged on a regular basis–whenever I get used to something like “track changes” in Word, now we have a new way of doing this I have to learn! Hurray! Because, after all, all I have is time to learn how to use new technology when I haven’t completely grasped the old yet. Heavy heaving sigh. AH, well, this evening after the data entry is completed I will see if I can figure it all out. It’s a good story, and I am excited to have sold it….but it also reminds me (when I was looking at the submissions spreadsheet last night, so I could update the story submission from yesterday, and add the others from this year I’ve not recorded yet) how few short stories I’ve been sending out lately. I’ve only sent out three stories this year–two have sold, the other went yesterday–and it irritates me to know that I’ve once again let something slide that I wanted to prioritize this year. And of course now I have exactly three months to write the Scotty book. Heavy heaving sigh. I need to get my shit together, don’t I?

I am also getting trained tomorrow on how to administer the monkeypox vaccine; my department head messaged me over the weekend about my schedule for Tuesday so I can get trained. I am assuming this means we are getting some of the vaccine* in for my clients; since I spend most of the week working in the clinic with appointments every hour I can’t see how I can work vaccinating in other departments or areas of the clinic (I work in the STI clinic for men who have sex with other men and trans individuals; which is just one small piece of our overall massive public health clinic), but who knows? I was a little taken aback to be told I was getting this training–I am not any kind of medical professional, I am merely certified by the state to do rapid antibody tests for HIV, syphilis, and hepatitis C; I turn them over to the nurse for everything else–but I guess anyone can give someone a shot if they know how, and obviously, this isn’t an intravenous shot but one that probably goes into the upper shoulder. I’m not a huge fan of getting shots–I loathe needles–let alone giving them; but…doing fingersticks to draw pipettes of blood to do the antibody tests got me over my dislike and distaste for blood, so this is a really good way to get me over my intensely visceral dislike of needles and shots. I can’t imagine it’s a lot more complicated than doing a fingerstick, really; just a matter of prepping the needle and then using the plunger once the skin has been pierced by the sharp end of the hypodermic. And who knows? Learning how to administer a vaccination might be something that could come in handy for my writing someday.

We also watched the new Neil Patrick Harris show, Uncoupled, on Netflix last night. In it, Harris plays Michael, a gay realtor in New York City whose partner of seventeen years (Tuc Watkins) decides out of the clear blue to leave him, moving out on his fiftieth birthday without any forewarning (Harris thinks they’ve been robbed), and the rest of the season shows him trying to adapt to being single again, dating again, and trying to get over the hurt and betrayal of the end of a relationship he thought was for life–and his old partner just doesn’t seem to want to have anything to do with him again. It was a very well done depiction of grief and anger and finally acceptance–it’s a shitty situation, and his character can’t see past his own shock, hurt and anger to even wonder what went wrong and why he didn’t see it coming in any way–but eventually he starts coming to terms with everything and starts moving on. It’s done by Darren Star, who also did Sex and the City, and there’s a very Sex and the City vibe to the show–I pointed out how like Carrie the main character was, and we spent the rest of the series deciding who Miranda and Charlotte and Samantha were of his friend group. The best part of the show, though, are the women: Marcia Gay Harden is fantastic as Claire Lewis, a wealthy woman whose husband has also just left her out of the blue, and Tisha Campbell is Emmy worthy as Michael’s business partner and best friend, Samantha. We did enjoy it–though I did have some questions about it, which could make (as always) an interesting essay someday–and are looking forward to the second season.

And on that note, this data ain’t gonna enter itself now is it? I’ll check in with you again tomorrow, Constant Reader.

*If this is, in fact, a general thing Crescent Care will be offering to the general population rather than just our established and current clients, I will of course make announcements on social media, so locals–stay tuned or watch this space or whatever you want to call it.

Too Far from Texas

I used to think you could never be too far from Texas, in all honesty, despite my deep appreciation and affection not only for Houston (I lived there for a time) but for all my marvelous friends in Texas. Murder by the Book, the only mainstream mystery bookstore that would allow me to have events in their store when I first published, always holds a deep place of affection within my heart and soul; I love that store, and of course, I also love me some Whataburger.

Whataburger alone makes Texas worth visiting, to be honest.

The Chanse MacLeod series was originally going to be set in Houston. I created him, and actually started writing about him, while i lived in Texas from 1989-1991. I remember distinctly that he had an office and a pager, as well as a secretary and an off-hours answering service…clearly, I didn’t understand how private investigators actually worked and was basing everything off movies, books, and television programs. But I do recall the name of the first book was going to be The Body in the Bayou–and Chanse was also straight in his original iteration–and it wasn’t until later (after my birthday visit here in 1994) that I decided to move it to New Orleans, and of course by the time I started rewriting the New Orleans version, I’d discovered gay mysteries and so of course, I changed his sexuality (I’ve never once regretted that either, I might add). I also put The Body in the Bayou aside and started writing a whole new murder mystery for him (Murder in the Rue Dauphine) that eventually became my first published book. Chanse remained from Texas–a small town in east Texas called Cottonwood Wells–and I even wrote a short story where Chanse goes back home to that small town. (I’d always wanted to write a book where he goes back home and has to deal with memories and so forth; I just never got around to it and his original publisher always made the sign of the cross at me whenever I suggested, “hey, should I set the next one in Chanse’s home town, where he has to go to clear up a crime someone from his past is accused of?”) Cottonwood Wells also popped up in earlier drafts of #shedeservedit, as where main character Alex’ family was originally from; that eventually got edited out over the final drafts.

Sunday morning and I slept late, and even after waking, stayed in the bed for a while longer. It felt very comfortable and my body was very relaxed, which was lovely, and I didn’t really want to get out of the bed, to be honest. I made swedish meatballs last night for dinner and left the mess for this morning (I am now cursing lazy Greg last night who made that decision–part of the reason I made this decision was I realized while cooking that the dishwasher had a clean load in it that needed to be put away, and it was a pain in the ass to do while cooking and trying to time everything) and I didn’t really want to come downstairs and face the mess. I did get some cleaning and organizing done yesterday–I did the kitchen floors at long last–and I also worked on the living room some. I wrote about fifteen hundred words yesterday to flex my writing muscles a little bit–I’ll probably go back over them again today as I write more–and I also have to get the proofs for Streetcar significantly finished today. I also want to work on the new Scotty a little bit as well. We’ll see how much I can get done this morning/afternoon before Paul gets up–although he is going to go into the office today; there was a lot of thunderstorms yesterday and street flooding, so he and the IT guy rescheduled for today (can’t say as I blame him, we were in and out of flash flood alerts all day yesterday; the joys of the tropics in the summer) which will free up this afternoon for proofing.

My self-care appointment (okay, it was a back wax; someday I will write an essay about my issues with body hair) went well and after that, I swung by and picked up the mail. On my way back home I stopped at the Fresh Market (I rarely shop there; I always forget it’s there) to get a few things, and while it is more expensive than other places, I like shopping there. The fruit and vegetables always seem much fresher, and rather than buying prepackaged ground sirloin, I instead got it from the butcher counter, remembering suddenly that it’s fresher that way–and those meatballs turned out superlatively. I think in the future I might shop there a little more regularly. They don’t carry everything I would need, of course–that would make life too easy–but for meats and fruit and vegetables…well, it really cannot be beaten. I spent some more time with In the Dark We Forget–which I am also going to do this morning for a bit, it’s really good and I want to find out what happened to Cleo and her parents–for the rest of this morning, and then I need to vacuum the living room at some point (I swept up the floor in there last night as well, and tried to get it to look cleaner and better organized in there as well; it’s amazing what a difference the clean floor makes). So, a busy busy day for one Gregalicious. But that’s fine, I kind of like having things to do…it’s just when I have so much to do the thought of it is soul-crushing and defeating that I don’t like it.

We started watching The Anarchists on HBO MAX last night, and it’s….something, all right. It’s also interesting how these people chose to define “anarchy” as something other than what most people generally accept it as meaning; but they were using the actual definition of anarchy rather than the societal definition. I always laugh at people who think that laws and rules and regulations are things that restrict freedom and are unnecessary in a society; it’s really just another branch of libertarianism or Ayn Rand’s insane “objectivism”–those laws and rules and regulations exist because they were necessary, because human beings tend to always operate by putting their own needs first. Regulations exist because food manufacturers regularly sold bad, or dangerous, food to the general public because there were no regulations and no one keeping them honest; robber barons created monopolies to exploit the public and make themselves rich (Bezos, Musk, etc are simply the modern day version of the robber barons) at the expense of the needy; hence we needed government intervention to prevent abuses. I’ve never understood the mentality of “oh, if we do away with regulations and laws and rules we’ll all live together in peaceful harmony” because there’s always at least ONE asshole in every group.

ALWAYS.

And on that note, I am going to make another cup of coffee, put the clean dishes away, and go read for a bit. Have a lovely Sunday, Constant Reader, and we’ll talk again tomorrow, if not later. (I’ve been going down the Stevie Nicks discography for my titles, and some of them–along with some of them from other song lists I was using before–wind up having the same titles as some of my books, and I’ve decided–see yesterday’s post about Sleeping Angel–that when I have a blog list song title that matches the title of one of my books, I am going to post about the book. Right now, I have Timothy in my stored draft blogs folder, and I think there’s another called “Watching Scotty Grow” in which I am trying to write the history of the series, which could be helpful as I am writing Book Nine at the moment, and since I am doing Stevie’s discography, that means Sara will also be coming up at some point.)