Tag: Alabama

Wake Me Up Before You Go-Go

I overslept this morning, which is really fine; I feel very rested, which means I needed the sleep and my muscles, which have felt tired all week, don’t this morning; so there you have it. I have some errands to run in the early afternoon, and I also have some writing to do today; I need to finish a chapter in the WIP and finish one in the Scotty. I should probably do so organizing and of course, the Lost Apartment is a mess. I also need to revise two short stories, whose due dates are rapidly approaching. Next weekend I will be in Alabama for the Murder in the Magic City/Murder on the Menu events, and the next weekend is the final parade weekend of Carnival (yes I am missing the first weekend for the first time in years). I do hate missing the King Arthur parade; I have lots of friends and acquaintances in that one, so I generally get buried in beads. I can’t believe I agreed to miss that weekend, but I also was so busy making sure it wasn’t the final weekend of Carnival that I didn’t notice.

Stupid, stupid, stupid Gregalicious.

Heavy sigh. I finished watching the first season of Black Sails last night, both at the gym and then when I got home after; I am, as I have said, really enjoying the show. I can’t quite figure out why I didn’t like this show when I tried to watch it several years ago, but I am really enjoying it now and glad I gave it another chance. I suspect I didn’t pay enough attention to it as I watched, and you kind of need to pay attention. There’s a lot going on, there are a lot of cross-plots, and lots of scheming. I don’t think I much cared for the way the women were treated in the first episode or two, either; it appeared that the women were all whores or mistreated terribly by men. But that’s not the case; the women are stronger and smarter than the men, and Eleanor Guthrie, who runs Nassau, is developing into quite the cold-blooded manipulative she-devil, which I am also rather loving. And of course, you can never go wrong with a hot, sweaty men in tight leather pants. My favorite, of course, is Tom Hopper, but Zach MacGowan, who plays Captain Charles Vane (and also played Roan on The 100; I thought he looked familiar) isn’t a slouch either.

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I also read two short stories last night, both horror, to keep the Short Story Project going.

The first, “Minuke,” by Nigel Keale, is from a very thick book edited by Marvin Kaye called Ghosts:

The estate agent kept an uncomfortable silence until we reached his car. “Frankly, I wish you hadn’t gotten wind of that,” he said. “Don’t know how you did: I thought I had the whole thing carefully disposed of. Oh, please get in.”

He pulled his car forward and frowned. “It puts me in a rather awkward spot. I suppose I;d better tell you all I know about the case, or you’d be suspecting me of heaven-knows-what kinds of chicanery in your own.”

As we set off to see the property I was interested in, he shifted the cigarette to the side of his mouth,

“It’s quite a distance, so I can tell you on the way there,” he said. “We’ll pass the very spot, as a matter of fact, and you can see it for yourself. Such as there is to see.”

This is a ghost story, or more properly, the story of a haunting;  it was originally written and published in 1950–which makes the story sixty-eight! It’s also told in a classic horror trope that is hardly used anymore, because it’s become cliche–someone is telling the story of what happened to someone else, a disinterested party. Stephen King has used this method a time or two; most notably in his novella “The Breathing Method” from Different Seasons, and sometimes in short stories. It’s a very classic trope–Dracula is an epistolary novel, after all, told in diary entries and letters. But at the time “Minuke” was originally published, horror wasn’t considered a form of literature and as such tropes hadn’t evolved into cliches quite yet, and it’s a well-told tale. The house of the title is merely a bungalow, built in the housing boom of the post-war era, and therefore its tenants are the first to live there; it is too young of a house to have a haunting, and yet it does. It turns out, you see, when the foundations were being dug, they came across some ancient Norse grave markers…(of course, at the time the story was written Poltergeist was many years away in the future, and the ‘never build on an Indian burial ground’ theme hadn’t become deeply engrained in the culture).

(Aside: the collection Ghosts is a gorgeous, leather bound edition with gold inlay and a ribbon page marker that I purchased for a few bucks off a sale table at Borders many years ago; I don’t know why I’ve never dipped into it before, but it’s going to definitely play a role in this year’s Short Story Project.)

The second story I read was “Fallen Boys” by Mark Morris, from Best Horror of the Year Volume Three, compiled and selected by Ellen Datlow, and originally published in Jonathon Oliver anthology The End of the Line:

When the child screamed, Tess Morton felt guilty for having to repress the urge to snap at it. She was aware that it wasn’t Matthew Bellings who should be punished, but his tormentors, and yet the boy’s cry of pain or distress was so whiny that it grated on her nerves.

The reason she felt little compassion for the child was because she knew it took almost nothing to provoke a wail of complaint from him. Matthew would cry out whenever someone barged into him in the school corridor; whenever a football was kicked towards him in the playground; whenever a classmate flicked a paper pellet at him, or snatched a text book out of his hand, or pushed in front of him in the lunch queue. Indeed, the merest slight would cause Matthew’s red-cheeked, strangely wizened face to crumple, his mouth to twist open and that familiar, toe-curling bleat to emerge.

This story, about a class field trip to an abandoned tin mine (now open as a tourist attraction and advertised as an education experience for children), is predicated on a horrific truth about bullying that we don’t like to acknowledge or understand; one that Stephen King exposed and explored powerfully in his own debut novel, Carrie. 

When we read accounts about bullying, and how teachers and other adults look the other way, we are horrified by it; when we read short stories and novels about bullying  our hearts naturally go out to the victims and we loathe the bullies and their enablers; long for their comeuppance, and are infinitely satisfied when it does come. But that bears no resemblance to the reality. That comes from the emotional distance, and the pleasant lies we so often tell ourselves, the lies about who we are as people, and how we would behave in certain circumstances–we identify with heroes and see ourselves as heroes; part of the brilliance of Stephen King’s work is he so often lays bare that horrific truth that we aren’t all heroes.

Take Tess Morton, the teacher taking her kids on this field trip. The story is completely told from her point of view. She knows that kids are bullying Matthew, and she also knows that as the voice of authority she has to try to put a stop to it. She does try, but it’s not taking because Matthew himself irritates her and sometimes she herself wants nothing more than to give him a good slap. This is the same way Miss Desjardin, the gym teacher who stops the shower assault on Carrie White in the opening scene of Carrie, feels about the victim; she has to punish the girls who did it, but Carrie irritates her, she wants to smack her a good one, and she understands why Carrie is bullied.

This is also why school–the hallways, the playground, the cafeteria, the gym–is so scarring for so many people, because they are so evocative of Lord of the Flies or The Hunger Games.

This is a great story; Morris builds his suspense beautifully, and the denouement is rather sudden when it happens–more than a little reminiscent of EC Comics, but it’s also rather satisfying.

And now. back to the spice mines.

Take Me to Heart

Being an LSU fan is not for the faint of heart.

Saturday afternoon in Toronto, after my panel, Paul and I retired to our room and flipped on the television to see if we could see the LSU-Auburn game up there. There was a CBS station from Buffalo, so we were able to do so; the primary problem being that when we turned the game on, it was late in the first quarter, the score was 17-0, and Auburn had the ball.

We both sighed resignedly and collapsed onto the bed.

I was raised on college football. My dad’s family are Auburn fans, my mother’s Alabama. I’ve had relatives play for both teams; bestselling author Ace Atkins also played for Auburn, and we bonded many years ago over our lifelong fandom of the Auburn Tigers. The rules in my family were very clear: we rooted for Alabama when they played everyone but Auburn. I always liked LSU, though–I thought the whole “Death Valley” thing and having an actual live tiger mascot was kind of cool, and of course I’ve always loved the colors purple and gold. After we moved down here to New Orleans, Paul started watching college football with me on Saturdays, and he started rooting for LSU; the same way we both rooted for the Saints. I followed the same rules I’d grown up with: root for Auburn, root for Alabama when they play everyone else but Auburn, and added root for LSU when they play everyone else but Auburn and Alabama.

Paul, of course, always rooted for LSU.

I remember one night a year or so after we moved here, we were out with friends at Lafitte’s and I happened to notice that the Clover Grill’s television was tuned into the LSU-Florida game. Florida was riding the nation’s longest winning streak, hadn’t lost an SEC (Southeastern Conference) game in a couple of years, and was ranked Number One in the country; LSU wasn’t given much of a chance. I wandered across the street with my beer to watch the kick-off and was stunned as LSU jumped out to an improbable 14-0 lead early in the first quarter. I only walked back across the street to get more beer or go to the bathroom or when it was half-time; I watched that entire game without sound through the Clover Grill’s windows and improbably, upstart LSU managed to hang on and win the game 28-21. It was probably the biggest upset in LSU football history, and Death Valley went crazy–I could also hear people yelling around the Quarter every time LSU scored.

Everyone knows about the great Halloween game between LSU and Ole Miss back in 1959, when LSU was ranked number one and Ole Miss number three, and LSU won on the great Billy Cannon punt return, 7-3. I watched the Auburn-LSU game in 1988, when LSU upset 4th ranked Auburn 7-6 on a last minute touchdown and the fans were jumping up and down so much it registered on the LSU’s geology department’s Richter scale (my cousin was playing for Auburn then, and in full disclosure–I wasn’t thrilled to see that Tommy Hodson pass completion). That game is now known as the Earthquake Game, and clinched a tie for the SEC title that year for LSU with Auburn.

I switched fully over to LSU after Hurricane Katrina, during the evacuation and the return, watching the LSU games because watching those games was something about Louisiana that was normal; when everything else seemed to be disrupted there were the Tigers playing in Death Valley. I didn’t have the Saints that year because they weren’t playing in the damaged Superdome, and there was talk about them being moved to San Antonio. Tiger Stadium had been a triage center as FEMA and the Coast Guard and the Marines air-lifted people out of New Orleans; many of the players were from the city and had relatives and friends and neighbors crammed into their apartments with them. LSU and the campus were instrumental to the rescue efforts, and essentially, a life-line for the city I loved so much. That year LSU moved to Number One in my heart, and they have stayed there ever since.

And the games! My God, LSU games are nail-biters almost always. and from 2005-2007 LSU seemed to almost always pull the game out at the end with some kind of insane end. LSU won the national championship in 2007; the only time a two-loss time did so, and were the first team with more than one loss to be able to lay claim to the national title in over forty years. There were so many great moments that year–including the insane come from behind win over Auburn. With time running out and the ball on the thirty yard line, one point behind…quarterback Matt Flynn threw a pass to the end zone that was caught to win the game 30-24 with one second left on the clock.

There have been many games like that since–the Tigers don’t always pull them out, but they do more often than they don’t. Last year’s Auburn game was the same–a touchdown pass completed to win the game as time ran out, only to have the officials rule the ball was snapped after time ran out and nullified the touchdown.

Coach Les Miles was fired after that game.

This year’s LSU team hasn’t looked good. Paul and I went to watch the lackluster win over BYU in the Superdome to start the season; we went to the season opener in Baton Rouge to see another lackluster win over a second-tier team. LSU was blown out at Mississippi State, but still managed to stay ranked….until they lost two weeks ago against Troy in Tiger Stadium; the first loss for LSU against a non-conference opponent since 2000. Somehow they managed to upset Florida 17-16 the next week in Gainesville…but this weekend, Auburn was ranked Number 10, rolling over everyone they played. Mississippi State, who had beaten LSU by thirty points, lost to Auburn 49-10. No one had high hopes…even though Auburn hadn’t won in Baton Rouge since 1999.

That year, after beating LSU 41-7, Auburn coach Tommy Tuberville and some of his players walked out onto the field to the tiger eye at the fifty yard line to triumphantly smoke cigars. It was an insult no one here has forgotten….and Auburn has lost every time they’ve played here since.

After forcing Auburn to kick a field goal to go up 20-0, LSU scored to make it 20-7. Auburn managed another field goal, but LSU scored in the closing seconds of the first half to make it 23-14, and were getting the ball back first in the second half. A comeback wasn’t out of the question….but on that first possession they had to punt, and despite keeping Auburn from getting a first down, a stupid penalty gave Auburn another set of downs and it was time for us to go.

I was certain the game was over.

I checked my phone later in the lounge as we ate hors d’oeuvres and drank wine in the lounge while waiting for it to be time for our dinner reservation–and lo and behold, the score was now 23-21 with about ten minutes left. I kept hitting refresh and BOOM! LSU kicked a field goal to finally go ahead 24-23.

They held on, kicking another field goal with just seconds left in the game to go up 27-23…and somehow pulled it off.

I still can’t believe I missed seeing it.

Geaux Tigers! I hope to see a replay of the game at some point.

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Death Valley: where dreams come to die.

We’ve Got the Beat

Staring down a twelve-hour day at the office today, rather grimly. Actually, it’s eight hours of testing at the office, and then three hours bar testing tonight, but I get a very short day tomorrow as a result and hopefully, I won’t be dead tired by the time I get home tonight. I slept in again this morning; would be perfectly happy to continue sleeping, quite frankly; so sleeping in tomorrow morning is actually going to be rather lovely. For some reason, though, my days are messed up this week; I kept thinking yesterday was Thursday, for example, and so am still a bit disoriented this morning about the days of the week.

Clearly, I am getting old.

As I continue to work on “A Holler Full of Kudzu” I am constantly second-guessing myself; I’ve written about the world/area where the story is set before, and I am worried, of course, that I am repeating myself with it. This morning I decided to just forge forward and stop worrying about it; that’s what edits/revisions/rewrites are for, after all. Part of the reason I’ve been so drawn to Southern Gothic fiction lately has been because not only because I am Southern but because I’ve so rarely used that personal history to write. As I have said before, two of my favorite short stories that I’ve written are “Small-town Boy” and the as-yet-unpublished “Whim of the Wind”; recently I’ve been thinking about that Civil War ghost story I’ve been thinking about writing for thirty years–which is also set in the same area (fictional Corinth County, Alabama, which I briefly touched on in Dark Tide–it’s where my main character is from originally–and again in Going Down for the Count–again, where the main character is from originally); and the more Southern Gothic fiction I read, the more I want to write that book. “A Holler Full of Kudzu” is also set in that area; and I am more than a little concerned that the story might wind up too derivative of “Small-town Boy”; but I will, as mentioned before, deal with that in the rewrites.

I also watched Captain America Civil War yesterday, since it marked the debut of Tom Holland as Spiderman. (And yes, I have become a huge fan of young Mr. Holland, but not in a creepy old-man pervy way. I just think he’s adorably cute.) I mean, the movie was okay, but Holland was definitely the highlight of the movie for me. I’ve not seen Captain America The Winter Soldier, so I obviously missed some plot points that probably would have helped the viewing experience somewhat; but it wasn’t that hard to figure out. I am, however, tempted to go back and watch it; I do love Chris Evans, but there are just so many Marvel films now that it’s a huge time commitment to get caught up on them all–and much as I love Chris Hemsworth, the first Thor movie was kind of boring.

All right, Constant Reader, ’tis back to the spice mines with me. Here’s a shot of Chris Evans, without a shirt, to help you through your Hump Day.

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Be With You

Tuesday morning, and I am not fully awake. I didn’t want to get up this morning–not that I ever do–but this morning was one of those whining, complaining and I just want to keep sleeping mornings. I never spring from the bed fully awake and revved up and ready to go; those days are long past, alas, but this morning was a bit harder than usual. Even coffee doesn’t seem to taste right this morning. It’s going to be, I fear, one of those days.

It was like pulling teeth, but I did finish my first (really bad) draft of “For All Tomorrow’s Lies” yesterday. That’s something, I think. It’s a mess, frankly, scattershot and all over the place, and clocked in at slightly less than four thousand words. Ideally, I think it needs to be between five and six, with me leaning more towards the longer end; but now I have a framework down to fix, so that’s something. I have another idea that I started working on over the weekend–the opening came to me out of nowhere; it’s one of those Alabama stories I like to write from time to time, and I suspect reading Tomato Red and the Faulkner short story “Smoke” had something to do with getting my mind into that particular gear. Unusually enough, it doesn’t have a title; I rarely write anything that doesn’t start with the title, and I haven’t the slightest idea of what the title would be, which puts me way outside of my comfort zone. The story itself is amorphous, a fog in my mind I need to take form, but I am going to start working on the rest of the story this morning. It’s grim–so much of what I’ve been doing lately has been grim–and I have to figure out what I am trying to say with the story. I think I know; it’s a tired old theme, but the beauty of writing is you can make tired old themes new and fresh again. We shall see. I probably have a title somewhere scribbled down that would be perfect for the story.

Uncharted territory! Writing something that has no title! Madness.

We got caught up on Season 2 of Animal Kingdom last night, and this show is very addictive. I don’t understand why it’s not better known, or generating more buzz. Ellen Barkin is fantastic, the young men who play her sons are terrific (and hot) as well, and the writing is pretty crisp. I think we’ll get caught up on Claws next, and then Orphan Black. We can’t decide if we want to give Will  a shot or not. We may be going to see Spiderman Homecoming this weekend, as well.

All right, I think it’s time to get back to my story. Here’s a hunk for your Tuesday:

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Stoned Soul Picnic

In a bizarre blog twist, my entire entry about Colson Whitehead’s The Underground Railroad, other than the opening paragraph, has completely disappeared from here, which is very strange. I don’t know how that could have happened; and it’s disappointing, as I made some very strong points about racism and the erasure of the brutality of slavery from our history. I did wonder why it, as opposed to so many of my other entries, wasn’t getting ‘likes’ by anyone, and now I know why–it’s not that it offended people, but rather that the entry is now simply, mostly gone.

How fucking annoying. And, of course, I always write the blog directly here, rather than using Word and cutting and pasting. So, it’s simply vanished into the ether, gone forever. Heavy heaving sigh. As for as writing losses go, it’s pretty low on the scale but at the same time…it hurts to lose any writing. Ever.

Heavy sigh.

I spent some more time reading Stephen King’s Finders Keepers yesterday between doing some cleaning (I never did get to the windows, but will today) and relaxing. I got caught up on Riverdale, ran some errands, cleaned the living room thoroughly (although I needed the ladder to do the ceiling fans and the windows, it was upstairs and so when I moved upstairs to I cleaned up there before bringing the ladder down, and by then I just wanted to relax and read), and did sit in my easy chair thinking about things I am working on. Today, I am going to do some straightening up around here, the windows and the ceiling fans in the living room, and I may finish cleaning upstairs. I don’t know, quite frankly; I am also feeling the lure of Finders Keepers, which I am really enjoying. It’s the middle book of his Bill Hodges trilogy, which began with the Edgar-winning Mr. Mercedes, which I also greatly enjoyed. I am almost halfway finished with the book, and King’s ability to create great characters the reader can understand and even empathize with, no matter how awful the characters may actually be, is on display here.

I also cleaned out some books for the donation pile, which is always a lovely start. I need to stop buying books, really, is what I need to do, but it’s a lifelong problem, and at almost fifty-six, I’m not sure I can effect behavior change anymore, but it’s certainly worth a try. I am also going to go to the gym later on today as well; and lift weights. If I go back to the old system–let’s face it, I am never going to motivate myself to do cardio–of what I did when I lost weight originally–go to the gym, do a full-body workout with more reps and lighter weights, and do some stretching–in addition to eating healthier, I should be able to get rid of that pesky fifteen pounds and get back down to 200. I don’t think I’ll ever be able to get back to 180–my oddly shaped frame would make finding clothes that fit properly an issue (the ten pounds or so I’ve already lost has made all my pants too big in the waist, but they are still tight in the legs, and the small waist and big quads/hamstrings has always been an issue for me with pants), so I don’t know that I’d want to get back down that far. A flatter stomach and more definition is all I really want, anyway, so that I can at least get to the point where I don’t mind going to the beach, as I would really like to get tanned again. And going to the beach is always lovely, anyway.

Apparently it’s going to rain today, so doing the windows is out. Heavy sigh. It does look gloomy out there. There’s always next weekend.

Friday I am driving up to Montgomery for an appearance at the Alabama Book Festival, and driving back to New Orleans for a day before heading up to an event at the Sarah Isom Center for Women at Ole Miss in Oxford. I am very excited, if a bit nervous, to do both events. It’s so lovely having a new car so that I don’t have to worry about the driving, though. I love my new car; and almost three months after I bought it, it still has the new car smell.

I’ve also figured out how to revise “Quiet Desperation”, which is something I’d like to get to work on this week. My work schedule is sort of normal for the week, despite a late night on Thursday. As I start getting back into the groove of writing and rewriting, I am hoping to get a lot more done from now on. I also no longer have to get up ridiculously early for work on Tuesdays anymore–I don’t have to be at the office until 11 henceforth–which makes the week a bit more palatable for me; I won’t be tired and sleepy from Tuesday on anymore. Here’s hoping.

I want to kick my writing up a notch or two, push myself harder. Fingers crossed.

Here’s an Easter Sunday hunk for y’all.

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Thank You for the Music

I have a late night of bar testing tonight, and as such got to sleep in a bit this morning, which was quite lovely. I am having lunch with a dear friend tomorrow (huzzah!), and I don’t really have any errands to run today before I go in to the office. I could, of course, run a few–there’s always something that needs to be done–but I can make a Costco run this weekend, as well as swing by the grocery store. I also have to pick up my license plate from the dealership, but I think I will also postpone that till next week. Plus I don’t have any deadlines, so I don’t have to worry about getting writing done this weekend so…yes, I can just run errands with a clear conscience this weekend and not worry about “when am I going to get my word count done?”

SO lovely, really. (And I may change my mind and run over to the dealership later today on the way to work….but it’s lovely having options.)

I do have some things around the house I need to get caught up–some cabinets need reorganizing and cleaning out; as do some of my kitchen drawers, and there’s always filing. Carnival is looming on the horizon; Krewe de Vieux is this weekend, and from all the reports I’ve heard and things I’ve seen on-line, with its theme of “The Crass Menagerie” they will be taking on the administration in Washington this year in their vulgar, hilarious and satiric fashion. I was reading some of the the descriptions of some of the floats and themes for the marching groups aloud to Paul last night and he replied, “So, when all of the pictures and videos go viral, the White House will declare war on New Orleans Sunday, won’t they?”

I replied, “I guess it depends on what Saturday Night Live does, really.”

I think, though, this morning I am just going to relax and ease into my late night. Drinking coffee, having some breakfast, and curling up in the easy chair with Lori Rader-Day’s Little Pretty Things does seem like just the right way for the day to get going, doesn’t it?

I’m also still a bit aglow from the weekend. It’s really so lovely to be around other writers and people who love books and love to read. It also recharges the batteries and feeds the creative muscles. Yesterday between clients I jotted down notes for a cozy mystery series I’ve been wanting to write for years, and could never quite wrap my mind around; oddly enough, after a weekend in Alabama I was able to get it all to click together in my head. Whether anything will come of it remains to be seen, but it was a lovely moment as all those clicks popped into place, you know? That’s always nice.

So, my chair and my book are calling to me, so I will leave you now, Constant Reader, with a hunk to get your day off to a great start.

Does Your Mother Know

It is so wonderful to sleep in your own bed after being away for almost a week. I don’t sleep well anywhere other than my bed, no matter how tired I am, and so last night when I tumbled into my own bed for the first time since the previous Sunday night, I was asleep almost the moment I hit the pillow and slept deeply and well. I feel very well rested this morning, if a little disoriented from traveling, which is always a good thing. And the new car is a rock star.

I have the day off from work today, so I can decompress and run errands and get everything around here back under control; jumping back into the day job today would have been a mistake and I would have been tired the rest of the week, which is never optimum. The house needs tidying and there’s laundry to do as well; and at some point I am retiring to my easy chair in order to finish reading Stephen King’s Mr. Mercedes. I’d thought I’d be able to finish it this past weekend in Birmingham, but alas–we were all having so much fun I wound up getting back to my room too late to spend some time reading. Thank you to Margaret Fenton and Tammy Lynn for organizing a wonderful books weekend to support two libraries, and thanks to the engaged audience of readers who showed up in both cities. I got to hang out and get to know some acquaintances better, some quality time with good friends, made some new ones, had a lot of laughs, went to visit the Vulcan statue in Birmingham, AND SOLD ALL OF MY BOOKS. Yay! I also feel very energized about writing again, and I (of course) came up with an idea for a new series while there.

I call that a win.

One of the many books I read last week was Last Words by Michael Koryta. I had an ARC from a few years ago (thanks Erin!) that I had not read, and so I decided to take it along with me on the trip to read. I’ve been a huge fan since I read So Cold the River a few years back, and his Those Who Wish Me Dead was one of my absolute favorites books of the year a couple of years ago. He is one of those writers whose books I parcel out to read because I don’t want to be out of new Koryta books, you know? I never want to think, “I’ve read all of his books and will have to wait for him to write a new one”.

But Last Words reminded me again of how great a writer he is, and I am going to have to resist reading everything he’s written over the next few weeks. I may allow myself another, though.

The last words he said to her: “Don’t embarrass me with this shit.”

In later days, months, and years, he will tell everyone who asks, and some who do not, that the last words from his lips to her ears were “I love you.” Sometimes, during sleepless nights, he can almost convince himself that it is true.

But as they walked out of their building and into the harsh Florida sun that September afternoon, Mark Novak didn’t even look his wife in the eye. They were moving fast even though neither of them was running late. It was the way you walked when you were eager to get away from someone.

Great beginning, right? Pulls you right into the story.

Mark Novak is the our main character, but there’s also another point of view character, Ridley Barnes. Ridley isn’t a reliable narrator (it is a third person point of view novel, but the point of view of both characters is so sharp and strong it may as well be first person). Mark and his wife worked for Innocence Incorporated, a non-profit legal firm that investigates death row cases to prove the innocence of the convicted (a not-so-well disguised fictional rendition of The Innocence Project). His wife was an attorney, Mark is an investigator. When they separated that hot summer day, she was off to interview a psychic who’d contacted them about one of their cases; he thought it was a waste of time and they argued about her going. SHe went off to the interview and he headed for the beach house they’d rented for a vacation…and time passes and she never shows up. Koryta does an excellent job of walking the reader through the stages of this sort of thing: the annoyance that she’s late; the anger because he hadn’t wanted her to go in the first place; and finally, worry and fear that something has happened. Something did happen: eventually, state troopers show up to let him know that her car was found in a ditch and she was dead; shot in the head.

Flash forward a couple of years, and Michael is still reeling from his wife’s death, and has done some things that have put his job in jeopardy. His boss has sent him up to Indiana to look into a murder case where there was no conviction or even a trial; Ridley Barnes was the chief suspect in the death, but there was never enough evidence against him for a trial or even an arrest. Barnes has written to them, and wants them to look into the case; to prove once and for all whether he did or did not commit the murder.

A young girl and her boyfriend had gone into the Trapdoor Cave and gotten separated. After days of searching, Barnes–who was an expert caver and an expert on the mine–separated off from the search party and eventually came out carrying her dead body. Michael is convinced the case is a waste of time–and it’s winter in Indiana. But once he gets to the small town and starts asking questions, strange things start happening, and what he remembers from his first day of questioning people is completely different from other people who witnessed the events report back. Has Michael lost his mind, or is everyone in the town part of a conspiracy to make him look crazy? And Barnes himself, who claims he doesn’t remember what happened down in the cave when he found the girl, often goes into the cave (or others in the area) to get away from people and calm himself. He believes that the cave is sentient and speaks to him; and there’s also a ‘dark man’ down there.

Two of my biggest fears are the dark and tight spaces (I have severe claustrophobia), and there are scenes when Barnes is working his way through the cave where I literally got so creeped out I had to put the book down, from the descriptions of the dark and the tight spaces. Barnes also has to get back into the cave with another search party when Michael is kidnapped and left alone in the cave in his underwear, in the cold and the tight and the dark with no idea where he is. That entire sequence is so chilling I thought I would have nightmares.

But as the book rushes along to its final solution, the pacing is exceptional, the writing vivid and exceptional, and the characterizations strong and great; reminding me again why Michael Koryta is one of my favorite writers. His most recent books is a sequel to Last Words, and I am really looking forward to getting into it–but I am resisting temptation as I have already selected the next book I am going to read.

Highly recommended.

Da Doo Ron Ron

There’s really nothing like a good night’s sleep, is there?

Well, that first cup of coffee after a good night’s sleep is pretty close.

Tonight is my late night; bar testing in the Quarter, and as such I have the morning and early afternoon free. I intend to get some cleaning done as well as some writing (that’s always the intent, but it never seems to happen quite the way I have planned; primarily, methinks, because I have a tendency to over-plan what I can get done as well as the ever-popular easy distractions).

Last night, while I alternated between American Horror Story (ugh) and the final game of the World Series–nicely done, Cubs–I finished rereading Be Buried in the Rain by Barbara Michaels.

be-buried-in-the-rain

The old pickup hit a pothole with a bump that shook a few more flakes of faded blue paints from the rusted body. Joe Danner swore, but not aloud. He hadn’t used bad language for six years, not since he found his Lord Jesus in the mesmeric eyes of a traveling evangelist. He hadn’t used hard liquor nor tobacco either, not laid a hand on his wife in anger–only when she talked back or questioned his Scripture-ordained authority as head of the family.

It would never have occurred to Joe Danner that his wife preferred their old life-style. Back then, an occasional beating was the natural order of things, and it was a small price to pay for the Saturday nights at the local tavern, both of them getting a little drunk together, talking and joking with old friends, going home to couple unimaginatively but pleasurably in the old bed Joe’s daddy had made with his own hands.

Since Joe found Jesus, there were no more Saturday nights at the tavern. No more kids, either. Joe Junior had left home the year before; he was up north someplace, wallowing in the sins he’d been brought up to hate…only somehow the teaching hadn’t taken hold. Not with Lynne Anne, either. Married at sixteen, just in time to spare her baby the label of bastard–but not soon enough to wipe out the sin of fornication. She lived in Pikesburg, only forty miles away, but she never came home anymore. Joe had thrown her out the night she told them she was pregnant, and Lynne Anne had spat in his face face before she set out on a four-mile walk in the traditional snowstorm, to collapse on the doorstep of her future in-laws. They had raised a real ruckus about it, too. Methodists. What else could a person expect from Methodists?

I loved Barbara Michaels, which was one of the two pseudonyms used by Dr. Barbara Mertz (the other was, of course, Elizabeth Peters). She was named a Grand Master by the Mystery Writers of America in the 1980’s, and her books were consistently excellent. Be Buried in the Rain was one of my favorites she published as Barbara Michaels; not quite as favorite as Ammie Come Home, House of Many Shadows, The Crying Child, or Witch, but definitely right up there with them.

The opening, which I’ve quoted above, gives you a slight picture of just how good she actually was. In those brief three paragraphs she sketches out a very clear picture of Joe Danner and who he is; without any physical description, I can see him perfectly in my head. This is shortly before he comes across a surprise in the country road; in a place called Deadman’s Hollow, where the county road cuts through the overgrown, gone to seed estate called Maidenwood–the skeletons of a woman and a baby. That discovery is the key to the story of Be Buried in the Rain, and it’s a terrific story. Julie, our first person p.o.v character (I resisted the urge to call her Our Heroine) is in medical school; her mother and family pressure her into spending the summer between classes at Maidenwood, helping care for her eighty-five year old malevolent grandmother, Martha. Martha is truly monstrous, and Julie spent four years as a child in Martha’s care at Maidenwood while her mother worked her way through college. After being retrieved by her mother, Julie has never returned to Maidenwood, and for the most part has blocked the memories of those four awful years out of her mind…but her return to Maidenwood starts bringing the horrible memories back.

At the heart of the story is the mystery of the identity of the skeletons, and where they came from. Local legend has always held that Maidenwood was the site of a British colonial settlement called Maydon’s Hundred that was wiped out in an Indian massacre; Julie has a love interest in an archaeologist named Alan whom she was involved with before, who was always interested in finding the remains of Maydon’s Hundred. Martha grimly put a stop to that, and her nastiness to both Alan and Julie also ended their relationship. Now both are back at Maidenwood…a crumbling, dirty old manse with an overgrown, almost oppressive vegetation surrounding it, as there hasn’t been money for decades to keep the place up.

The atmosphere is fantastic; Michaels is at her best at describing the oppressive heat and humidity, the overgrowth, the darkness inside the house that is not only literal but symbolic. It brought to mind memories of my own childhood summers in Alabama at my own grandmother’s–but my grandmother wasn’t a monster like Martha. It also reminded me of an idea I had for a book about Alabama…

I really do need to write about Alabama.

And now, back to the spice mines.