Tag: Alexandre Dumas

Woman to Woman

I love history, and I especially love French history.

I’ve noted before that my favorite centuries (not in this order) are the 1400s, the 1500s, and the 1600s, with the 1700’s and the 1800’s pretty high on the list as well. It was the Renaissance and a time of enormous change. The Eastern Roman Empire finally fell in 1453, when the Ottomans took Constantinople, changing power politics in Europe forever and creating a significant degree of upheaval and fear across the continent. There was the splintering of Christianity and the wars of religion that raged for centuries, that started in the early 1500s when Martin Luther nailed his theses to the cathedral doors. Henry VIII tore England out of allegiance to Roman Catholicism after defending it vigorously for decades. Spain united and drove the Moors out–even though the Spanish nations remained independent, united only in the person of their monarch. Charles V presided over the largest world empire of all time until the British Empire rose after the final defeat of Napoleon. And the sixteenth century, which opened with Queen Isabella the Catholic of Castile proving that a woman could rule as wisely as a man–and could lead an army just as well, too. The sixteenth century saw the highest concentration of royal power being welded by women in history–and a lot of them were Hapsburg women, descendants of Isabella who always looked to her as a role model.

France was no exception in this century of powerful women–beginning with Henri II and his mistress, Diane de Poitiers, and after his death, his widow Catherine de Medici took power. Her youngest daughter, Marguerite de Valois, is one of the forgotten women of history. She too was a queen–Queen of Navarre, married off to the Huguenot leader in an attempt to make peace on the religious question, but her wedding also kicked off the ST. Bartholomew’s Day Massacre. She was also a power player in French politics from the time of her marriage on, but she isn’t really remembered much–and if she is, the calumnies about her sexuality were always used to demean and diminish her, and most of it was slander. She is perhaps best known because Alexandre Dumas wrote about her in Queen Margot. I had a Dumas period as a teen, and I loved Queen Margot.1 I had also read about her in Jean Plaidy’s bio of her husband, Evergreen Gallant, which also painted her as a horny slut controlled by her lusts and passions. I’ve never been a fan of slut-shaming–if men could be promiscuous, why not women–and so was always interested in her, just as I was interested in her mother.

Catherine had a rather shitty life until 1559, both her childhood in Italy and the first twenty-five years of her marriage. This colored the rest of her life, when she became ruthless when it came to protecting her family and the throne of her sons. (Afore-mentioned St. Bartholomew’s Day massacre, anyone?) She didn’t seem to much care for her two youngest children–Marguerite and Francois-Hercule–who wound up bonding because no one else cared about them. Catherine wasn’t royal, so the French court and people despised her as “the banker’s daughter,” and there was never any question that this marriage only came about because the French needed the money and her uncle was pope2. For ten years she was hated and ignored, constantly worried about being set aside for a princess–particularly when the Dauphin conveniently died and her husband became heir to the throne. But then she had a son, and then had ten more children over the next fifteen years. Henri II’s sudden and unexpected death caught the entire nation unprepared; Catherine smoothly maneuvered the hated mistress out of his life as he died and, once he was in the grave, seized her jewels and best estates and exiled her from court. Her motto was said to be “hate, and wait.” Jean Plaidy, tireless writer of fictionalized biographies of royalty, devoted a trilogy to Catherine: Madame Serpent, The Italian Woman, and Queen Jezebel, in which she tried to be apologetic about Catherine and her decades of misrule, murder, and conspiracies. Catherine could be weak, and always dissembled, cried and lied as she manipulated her nobles, her people and other heads of state–not always successfully. Catherine, niece of a pope, felt no problem allying herself with heretics if it was in her best interest. Her power and influence faded during the reign of her favorite son, Henri III3.

But perhaps the worst thing Catherine ever did was how she treated her youngest daughter.

The book carries the subtitle Catherine de Medici, Her Daughter Marguerite de Valois, and the Betrayal That Ignited a Kingdom.

The betrayal was an attempt, by Catherine, to put an end to the religious strife in France by marrying her youngest daughter to her cousin, currently third in the line of succession, King Henry of Navarre, who was a Huguenot. Neither Henry nor Margot wanted this marriage–despite her mother’s apparent lack of religious conviction, Margot was very much a devout Catholic–and Catherine tried to use the occasion of the wedding to murder Admiral Coligny, leader of the Huguenots and a trusted advisor to her son, Charles IX. She wanted to remove his influence over her son and take out the enemy leader at the same time. The assassination failed, and resulted in the St. Bartholomew’s Day Massacre, in which Margot herself hid and saved her husband and some of his friends from the mobs killing Huguenots. This threw Margot directly into power politics, and she never trusted her mother or her brothers again. Once she was involved, she proved herself to be not only smart but a very capable conspirator whose life was in danger from that moment on–until her own brother finally was killed in 1589 and her husband became king of France. They had their marriage annulled, and oddly enough, she became very close friends with her former husband, his second wife, and their children. She bore the honorific of queen for the rest of her life, and she was very wealthy and quite beloved; her mother was so hated her funeral was conducted secretly; all of Paris turned out for Margot’s.

It’s a very interesting period, but as I read this, I did take note that in many cases–all this political intriguing and diplomacy and duplicity? Wouldn’t really make for a great novel, because it takes years for things to happen; they spent most of their time sitting around, worrying, waiting for news. This is why shows like Reign and The Serpent Queen inevitably fail; they have to speed things up substantially to maintain suspense and viewer interest. I encountered this before when thinking through a couple of historical espionage thrillers (one having to do with Catherine’s Flying Squadron, beautiful women trained to be seductress spies for the Queen Mother; the other having to do with the Babington Plot in England); these things inevitably take months because of the great distances and medieval ways of traveling and sharing information. The great adventures of Margot’s life took seventeen years to pass. That’s a long fucking time for a suspense narrative, isn’t it?

The book is quite good. Nancy Goldstone is a good writer; the words all flow together and she arranges her researches in an excellent order for a brisk narrative. (She uses Margot’s memoirs, royal letters of her mother’s, and so forth to tell the tale.) The stakes are also very high–the future of France is at stake as the Valois dynasty slowly but surely dies out in the second half of the century.

One of the more interesting aspects of the 1300’s and 1400’s was that most nation’s problems during those years was too many members of the royal family, which led to strife; while the 1500s and 1600s were marred by royal sterility.

Highly recommended for fans of history and those who might be interesting in two women who don’t get nearly as much attention as they should.

  1. There was even a French language film version, starring Isabelle Adjani at her most beautiful. ↩︎
  2. Same pope who refused Henry VIII’s divorce, and thus lost England forever to Catholicism. ↩︎
  3. The gay one! ↩︎

Killer Queen

Ah, my lord the Duke of Buckingham; probably one of the most successful fuckboys in history.

Contemporaries wrote of his physical beauty constantly when he was a young man, and first coming to the attention of his King; and while I’ve certainly never read any biographies of George Villiers, I have always been vaguely aware of him–primarily because of his role in The Three Musketeers, which is, of course, a marvelous fiction. While I have no doubt that George may have become enamored of the French Queen (the Hapsburg Spanish princess Anne of Austria) while in France arranging the marriage of Charles I to the French Bourbon princess Henrietta Maria (which, despite the success of the marriage, was a big mistake in the macro sense; the Stuart penchant in the seventeenth century of marrying Catholic princesses eventually led to their fall and the extinction of their direct line); without reading more into the history of the period, it’s hard to say whether that fiction of Dumas’ was based in rumor or was simply his own creation–but George was definitely a fuckboy, so anything is possible.

It took me until I was a bit older to realize the relationship between my lord Buckingham and his king was a bit more than just “best buddies.”

And even then, it took me a little while longer to recognize that the Buckingham of The Three Musketeers was also the same favorite of King James’. It was his son that was the bosom buddy of Charles II; he also was the cousin of Barbara Villiers, Lady Castlemaine, one of that king’s longest running and most notorious mistresses (I named Chanse’s landlady after her, actually), so there were a lot of noble Villiers entwined with the destiny of the royal house of Stuart during the seventeenth century. Of course, given how language was blurred about Kings and their favorites in the histories I read, it never crossed my mind to read more into them until I was in my thirties (also, reading Cashelmara by Susan Howatch made me realize Edward II’s favorites also shared his bed…and then all the other pieces, about James I and Henri III of France began falling into place, even if their sexuality was determinedly erased from history.

So, when I saw the first preview for Mary and George, I was very excited. A series that actually isn’t afraid to address James Stuart’s actual sexuality, and that of his fuckboy, my lord George Villiers, the Duke of Buckingham? Starring Julianne Moore and Nicholas Galitzine? Julianne Moore was clearly relishing playing the hell out of the ambitious let-nothing-get-in-her-way mother?

I was so in.

And in all honesty, I knew Galitzine was becoming a heartthrob/sex symbol, but with blond hair he reminded me too much of Macauley Culkin and I just didn’t really see it.

But as a brunette? Beautiful, and perfectly cast.

See what I mean? Sex on a stick, just like Buckingham’s contemporaries said.

I can see why historians tried so hard to erase the truth about the rise of the Villiers family, from lower nobility to a dukedom; the fact that Mary groomed her gorgeous son to seduce the king as a way to riches and power is not something you encounter frequently in the pages of history; especially in the modern age…but this was very common throughout history with beautiful girls…they were groomed and educated with an eye to seducing a powerful man for money, prestige, and power, and if the man was a king, even better.

Mary and George is pretty historically accurate, too–more so than many of these kinds of series, where things are changed for the sake of story, but the rise of George Villiers is dramatic enough, as well as all the court intrigue behind the scenes, but…the final episode to me was the only failure in the series. Even though I knew how it would all end, I kept thinking they’d come up with some way to make the end more dramatic, but that last episode felt rushed to me, didn’t have enough set-up to work as a finale and it just then kind of….ended. But the show is gorgeously produced; the costumes, the sets, and the acting is all excellent…until the last episode. In that episode, George has already been raised to duke…yet his clothes are the most drab of the entire season other than the first episode, when his preparations to be a fuckboy get underway. George was very famous for his splendid, ornate and opulent style of dress; he was always covered in jewels from head to toe, but for some reason they tried to make him look as drab and unattractive as possible. That certainly wouldn’t have been the case when he visited the Spanish court with the Prince of Wales (excellent casting; he looked just like the paintings of Charles I); it would have undermined English prestige to show up at the court of Philip IV so underdressed.

There’s also frontal male nudity, and lots of gay sex scenes. Buckingham was undoubtedly, at best, in modern terms a bisexual; the best quote of the show about sex partners was “bodies are just bodies”–which both mother and son say any number of times as they bed both genders happily.

I highly recommend it, and would love to see more of these shows.

Put It In A Magazine

Wednesday morning in the Lost Apartment, where it is a staggering 39 degrees outside. Brrr! But I slept pretty well (even if I didn’t want to get up), and my mind is slowly but surely coming back to life. Yesterday wasn’t a bad day at all, but I was out of sorts and off-track for pretty much the entire day, because my routine was disrupted when I got to work and so…yeah. I did run my errands on the way home from work last night and got home to a needy Sparky, so I had to spend some time playing with him and then transformed my lap into a cat bed for a little while. Tomorrow morning I have to get up super-early for PT–which I am not looking forward to, and of course there’s a department meeting on Friday morning, that I think I’ll go into the office for despite it being my at-home day and having the ability to call in for it. I have some on-line events Saturday for the January Bold Strokes bookathon, which I should post more about, and then the rest of the weekend is mine.

I did some more research into a story I am writing last night, and yes, I actually started writing the story. I’m writing about Julia Brown, the “witch” of Manchac Swamp who worked as the healer in a small town inside the swamp and along the lake shore, which was only accessible by railroad. Frenier was a small community, and it was completely destroyed by the 1915 hurricane; all that is left of it is the cemetery and it’s only accessible by boat now. I’ve always wanted to write about the 1915 hurricane since I first learned of it–it came up when I was down a rabbit-hole about the Filipino settlements on Lake Borgne, which were also destroyed in the 1915 hurricane, which led me to reading about Frenier, and the so-called curse of Aunt Julia Brown. (I do wish I’d known about all this before I wrote a Sherlock story set in 1916; no mention of the previous year’s destruction in that story is odd but maybe unnecessary; it didn’t impact the plot of the story at all, but…if I set another Sherlock story in that same time period I need to address that elephant in the room.)

I also went down another research wormhole last night, too–inspired by Mary & George–about George Villiers, Duke of Buckingham and his close relationship not only with James I but with his son, Charles I…although the relationship between Villiers and Charles I wasn’t quite the same kind of erotic friendship as Villiers enjoyed with the senior Stuart. Buckingham was also one of the real historical figures that appeared in Dumas’ The Three Musketeers, which I still want to retell one day from the point of view of Milady deWinter. It’s such a fascinating period, really, and the clothes! Mon Dieu, the clothes! I’ve always been fascinated by Cardinal Richelieu, and really need to get over my fear of writing about a historical period and just buckle down and write that damned book, don’t I? Sigh. I also need to get back to both Chlorine and Muscles, too.

Heavy heaving sigh.

But I am also starting to feel like I am settling back into my normal, every day life, and I feel better than I have in years. That cloudy feeling in my brain seems to be gone, and I am adapting to getting back up early in the morning without much hassle; I suspect the sleeping pills are working their magic and sending me into a deep healthy sleep every night, which pays off in being both awake and lucid in the morning. I’ve also got some blog entries to finish writing–my thoughts on Saltburn, because I know everyone is just waiting to hear what I have to say about it, and some analysis of the most recent chapter of the graphic novel Heartstopper, both of which are destined to be queer cultural artifacts.

And I hope to finish reading Tara Laskowski’s The Weekend Retreat before the weekend, too. I should have spent some time with it last night, but it was after six when I got home and by the time I was finished with putting stuff away and quality Sparky time and writing, it was later and so I just went down the Villiers wormhole. I also watched the final episode of season 2 of War of the Worlds, and am officially tapping out now. Not only was the shark jumped, the story became preposterous. I thought it might be a bit more interesting and intriguing once I realized the direction they were going in, but no. I also forgot part one of the Real Housewives of Salt Lake City was airing last night, so I’ll be catching up on that tonight after reading. I get to go straight home from the office tonight, so fingers crossed that I’ll get some good reading time in before I shut my mind off and dig into some reality television.

And on that note, I am heading into the spice mines. Have a lovely Wednesday, Constant Reader, and who knows? I may be back later.

Maneater

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

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

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

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

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

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

Padam Padam

And here we are at a manic Monday yet again, and shortly I will be heading into the office for yet another exciting week of the day job. Hurray and huzzah? I slept really well on Saturday night, getting up just after seven yesterday despite not going to bed until almost midnight; I found myself reading some things Saturday during the games that I shouldn’t have started–one of them being Queen Margot by Alexandre Dumas; I have the ebook–and I was also reading legends and stories about Louisiana’s past as well as Alabama’s; I have an ebook called Warrior Mountains Folklore: An Oral History by Rickey Butch Walker (which is an Alabama name if I’ve ever heard one); which isn’t necessarily about the Alabama county I’m from, but the ones directly north, including notorious Winston County, which contains the Bankhead National Forest. It also tells stories of the indigenous people of the area, and reminded me that Tuscaloosa actually is the Creek words for “black warrior,” meaning the Black Warrior River is actually the Tuscaloosa (tusca loosa); this will all go into the construction of my fictional Alabama county, which is ongoing. (And yes, the irony that one of the greatest–if not the greatest–college football programs is in a town named Black Warrior in the native tongue is hilarious.)

(It has occurred to me that I don’t necessarily have to connect all of my Alabama stories just as I don’t need to connect all my Kansas stories–which I realized while writing #shedeservedit–which was kind of freeing. I need to think in terms of multiverses rather than one single interconnected universe with my writing, don’t I? It certainly makes things easier than trying to keep the continuity and so forth going.)

Anyway, I am sure my Alabama just-for-fun research will undoubtedly pay dividends in future writing, no doubt. I also have been having ideas for more stories set there; I may give Jake’s boyfriend Beau his own story at some point; I keep going back to the legend of the Blackwood witch from antebellum/early statehood days, because the witch story is one I’ve always wanted to tell. Beau, being an archaeology major with a minor in Alabama History, is just the perfect person to tell the story of the witch I’ve always wanted to tell. But is it weird to have another vengeful spirit in the woods behind the Blackwood place, and the Civil War ruins? Or could it be tied to the lost family cemetery, still out there in the woods somewhere? As you can tell, I’ve been thinking about it lately.

I managed about a little more than twenty-five hundred words on the new Valerie yesterday, which felt great to do, really. I wanted to write some more on the Jem sequel, too, but after finishing the Valerie chapter I just felt mentally fatigued. I’m not used to writing this much in a short period of time anymore (just over an hour or so) and it’s going to take me a while to get back up to the proper writing speed I cannot maintain year-round. But it felt great to be creating again, and I do love the plot of this book. I also spent some quality time with Shawn Cosby’s marvelous All the Sinners Bleed, which is going in a direction I did not see coming and one that I am really enjoying. Shawn is such a master story-teller! I can’t wait to finish this so I can write about it–and I hope I finish it in time to read Lou Berney’s new one before I switch to October Halloween Horror Month. I think I may try out a Grady Hendrix novel for one of my horror reads and of course, I am terribly behind on Stephen King, and there are also some other lovely horror novels and collections in my piles of books to be read that could make for a fun reading month: Stephen Graham Jones, Silvia Moreno-Garcia, Paul Tremblay, Christopher Golden, Sarah Pearse, and Katrina Monroe, among so many others–I need to get back into the habit of reading for at least an hour every day. The only way to get through all the books i want to read is to make a daily time allowance for reading and stick to it.

After the abysmally disappointing Saints game, I went back to my easy chair and rather than delving back into Shawn’s book, I decided to start reading Jackson Square Jazz, the finished and published edition, to get a better handle on the story again. It’s been a long time, and I knew it had to do with a young figure skater, the Napoleon death mask, and the Cabildo fire, but not really much beyond that–although I think it’s actually the book where Scotty is in his first canonical car accident. Again, I am distant enough from it now not to immediate go into editing mode as I read it–ironic, since I need to re-edit it–and just read it. I really need to stop being so hard on myself. I know I’ve already made great strides in that direction, and I like my new positive attitude toward writing and publishing. I think analyzing why I am so hard on myself, recognizing the mentality I defaulted to when reading my work meant needing to flip a switch in my brain and going into a different mode other than editorial and doing it consciously makes a lot of difference. I was pleased rereading my short story collection, and was pretty pleased with rereading Jackson Square Jazz, particularly since it’s an early book in my canon and it’s been over twenty years since I wrote it.

(It’s kind of awe-inspiring and terrifying at the same time to realize just how long I’ve been doing this. Bill Clinton was president when I signed my first book contract.)

Well, that made me feel rather elderly.

I slept super-well last night, too. I was very tired and falling asleep in my chair, so I went to bed around nine and only woke up once, around two, and then woke up again half an hour before the alarm (as usual). Hopefully, I will not be too tired to function later today.

And on those two rather sad trombone notes, I am heading back into the spice mines. Have a lovely Monday, Constant Reader, and I will be back before you know it.

Sugarcane

My word, this week has not been an easy one for our Gregalicious. Suffice it to say that I am really looking forward to this week being over and leave it at that, shall we? I mean, Jesus Christ, already.

Being low energy low whatever it has been this week–started last week towards the end, really–has kind of sucked, to be honest. I’m not sure what the problem is–and it’s usually some kind of chemical thing in my brain, I think, these highs and lows came and go–and the lows really kind of suck; I just don’t have the bandwidth or energy to face or do anything unless it’s relatively easy and/or simple. It’a also incredibly easy for me, whilst in the grips of a low, to feel defeated by almost any and every thing that requires thought or some sort of energy, and I also find myself very short of temper–which means easily annoyed, easily angered, and easily aggravated. I got home from work yesterday evening and forced myself to go to the gym–but despite the energy and good feeling that came with the workout, it really didn’t last very long and didn’t carry over the way it usually does; pushing me into a whirlwind of getting things done and organized and dashing around the Lost Apartment cleaning and straightening. I did manage to get some laundry started, but the dishes are still is the dishwasher and the sink is starting to fill with dirty dishes again. Tonight I don’t have to go to the gym so after work hopefully I’ll have the energy to put the dishes away and finish the laundry and get my act together.

But I am glad I asked for a deadline extension. There’s no way I could have finished by Monday, and that would have made the entire low thing even worse.

I guess this is what I’ve always called the malaise before, only it usually comes around after I finished a manuscript–and yes, I know I finished Bury Me in Shadows, but usually the malaise doesn’t settle in until I have finished everything contracted–I’ve always thought it was triggered by the panic of being out of contract, but since I don’t really sign contracts far in advance anymore, I don’t think that’s what causes it and it certainly isn’t the cause of it now. Interesting that all these years I’ve always been wrong about the malaise, really. I guess I am not as self-aware as I like to think I am (nobody is as self-aware as they should be and I am very aware my self-awareness has massive blind spots; but I tend to think I am more self-aware than most people–which could also be one of the big blind spots, which is a sort of self-awareness and….yes, it’s a spiral endlessly circling back on itself, isn’t it?). I watched some history videos on Youtube last night–my mind wasn’t really functioning well enough for me to either read or write, so mostly I spent the evening with Youtube videos–some interesting ones on American history, Youtube really is a treasure trove of just about anything you could possibly want to watch to waste time–and social media, but I’m really getting a bit tired of social media. I hate the new Facebook design, and I find myself there a lot less frequently than I used to be; mostly I’ve just been sharing the blog there and not really interacting with anyone, and the same with Twitter–although I do enjoy replying to trash bag right wing elected officials with “resign, traitor”–but I also am not entirely certain that might not be a part of the general malaise.

I just want to get past it, really.

My muscles are tired this morning, the way they usually are after a workout day, and I slept deeply and well. The bed was a very comfortable and warm cocoon from which I didn’t want to emerge this morning; we’re back to the normal weather for this time of year in New Orleans–cold at night and warm during the day–which means you can never really properly dress for the weather because there’s going to be a twenty to thirty degree swing in the temperature throughout the course of the day, but rather this than last week’s frigid climes. Our new HVAC system is currently in process of being installed, which is good because while it can get stuffy in the Lost Apartment during the warm times of the day, I discovered yesterday that simply turning on the ceiling fans will take care of that issue immediately–coupled with the drop outside, of course. (I just checked today’s weather–it’s currently 46 but will reach a high of 75 today–if it was humid the apartment would be unbearable today when I get home; thank heaven for low humidity times of the year) It’s so weird to turn on the heat in the car on the way to work and have to use the air conditioning on the way home because the car has been sitting in the hot sun all day. Yay? But it also means that the temperatures are rising gradually to the peaks of the summer–and I am about to find out how the loss of the trees is going to affect the kitchen and my work space. I suspect there will be dark heavy curtains in my future….

Well, would you look at that? I never finished yesterday’s post, how unlike me this is–and yet another example of how off I have been this week; yesterday was much better than Tuesday, but there was still a lot of dragging and not wanting to get things done. I came home last night–Paul was filming a musical performance for the Festival on the roof of the Monteleone Hotel, and so wasn’t going to be home until late–and decided to finish watching It’s a Sin without him. The thought had (and has) crossed my mind that a lot of what I was experiencing this week, emotionally and energy-wise, was a reaction to watching the first three episodes on Sunday night–it certainly opened a lot of doors I had slammed shut in my mind many years ago. When we talk about representation, and how it matters…well, It’s a Sin, painful and heartbreaking as it is, was probably the first time I saw myself on screen–I saw myself in these characters, and some of the scenes could have come from my own experience. I have always compartmentalized my life–it’s how I’ve coped and not gone stark raving mad over the years–and I don’t think I was mentally prepared for all the memories this show was going to bring back to me. It’s a brilliant show, really; and while I can certainly question some of the choices made–I can also argue the counterpoint position as well. It also reminding me of so many choices made during the course of my life, and how, far too frequently, shame and fear controlled my life and the decisions made. When I rebooted my life in 1994–and yes, that is precisely what I did–I closed the doors for the most part on my past. Was that the right decision? I don’t know. But what I do know is that I also decided, in 1994, to live with the choices I made and stop feeling regret–even when you know damned well decisions were made out of cowardice. It was cathartic in some ways–I’ve realized over the course of watching the show that many of the decisions I made back in 1994 when I reinvented my life were for self-protection; a metaphorical wiping clean of the slate because remembering and thinking about things and experiences and losses was self-defeating.

I distinctly remember, at thirty-three, deciding that I could no longer live my life afraid of dying, and that no one at that age or younger should have to live with that fear. It’s also when I started getting angry, about injustice and prejudice and bias and casual hatred. There’s a lot more to unpack here, of course, and I suspect.I shall be processing this for a while.

I then decided, after the cathartic cleansing weeping from viewing the last two episodes of the show, to watch something fun and utterly escapist while I waited for Paul to come home, so I watched Richard Lester’s 1973 version of The Three Musketeers, which I actually saw in the theater when it was released. I’d not read the book (but had read the Classics Illustrated version; many literary classics have only been read throughout my life through Classics Illustrated comic books), but it was a historical and I loved history; so one Sunday after church we went to see it in the theater. It’s been a favorite ever since–the serious attention to period detail was astonishing–and again, Michael York. I think it was in The Three Musketeers that my early crush on Michael York was born–so beautiful, and those blue eyes! It was fun, even if, as I watched, for the first time I realized that the motivations for the characters–the royal and powerful ones, at any rate–made little to no sense. I have been thinking for well over a decade about writing what would basically be fanfic for The Three Musketeers…and in watching the movie again last night I was able to put my finger directly on why I’ve never been able to get that sorted and written, at least in my mind: it was precisely the motivations of Cardinal Richelieu in setting the action of the story in motion that I was never able to wrap my mind around. The antipathy that existed between Cardinal and Queen (the Spanish Anne of Austria) is well documented; and there has always been much speculation about it (I read one novel by, I believe, Evelyn Anthony called The Cardinal and the Queen that posited that Richelieu also loved the Queen and her rejections of him drove his hatred of her…although, per this novel, they eventually fell in love and Richelieu actually fathered her two sons! Yeah, I don’t believe that.) Richelieu was not someone who allowed his own personal feelings interfere with affairs of state and his plans, and his plans were to break the power of the Hapsburg family while building France–and its monarchy–into the preeminent power in Europe. The idea of exposing the Queen’s potential infidelity and humiliating Louis XIII in such a manner doesn’t fit into that plan–or perhaps I am simply not politician enough to see where it would…yes, it would be humiliating to Spain and the Hapsburgs (the Queen was of the Spanish branch of the family), but the marriage couldn’t be annulled as she had already been pregnant (losing all three children), and a divorce? I doubt the Pope would have granted such a divorce…and it surely would have meant war with Spain–at the same time that Richelieu was fighting a war against the Huguenots to unify France, and that war also meant maneuvering to keep England from interfering. But it’s good to know that there’s actually a good, historical based reason in why I’ve not been able to make the story work in my head or even as I scribble notes on it. Alexandre Dumas was able to get away with turning Richelieu into his villain without explanation of his plans and why it was politically important to publicly shame and embarrass the Queen (and the King by extension), and the flimsy “The Cardinal wants to ruin the Queen so he has more power over the King!” doesn’t work because the Queen had no power over her husband, or influence with him–she didn’t from the day they were married until the day he died, and even as he lay dying he tried to prevent her from being made regent for their son, so even then he didn’t completely trust her.

So, once I get the political situation worked out, perhaps I can finally write the book.

And on that note I am heading into the spice mines. Have a lovely day, Constant Reader, and apologies for never finishing this yesterday.

Waiting for the Sirens’ Call

Well, it’s now Thursday and let’s see how the rest of this week goes. I don’t have to go back to the office until Ash Wednesday–working at home today and tomorrow–and then over the weekend (all four days of it) I can leisurely clean and write and get things done, which is always a plus. Paul hasn’t been getting home from the office until almost ten every night this week–making me a Festival widow, as I always am every year at this time; the primary difference being Paul would come home for the parades and then work on things at his desk until all hours of the night while I went to bed. Last night’s Youtube wormholes included Kings and Generals videos about the Ottoman Wars; short documentaries about Henry VIII’s sisters, Margaret and Mary (who don’t get near as much attention as their famous brother– had Henry’s matrimonial efforts been a bit more in line with those of a normal king, Margaret and Mary would have most likely gone down in history for their own notoriety and scandalous lives…as it is, they are most forgotten footnotes to Tudor history. But all the British monarchy after Elizabeth I is actually descended from Margaret Tudor rather than Henry VIII); another couple about another favorite sixteenth century royal woman Marguerite de Valois (immortalized as Queen Margot in the Dumas novel); famous courtesans of history; and the decline and fall of the Byzantine Empire. (I really have always wanted to write about palace intrigue in Constantinople–there’s a reason why “byzantine” has come to mean interconnected elaborate conspiracies with twists and turns and surprises)

I was also very tired yesterday, after my third “get up at six and go to the office” day in a row. I am acutely becoming more and more aware of my age and the increasing fragility of my body; nothing terribly original or insightful, really. The decay of our bodies is something we can generally spend a good portion of our lives not thinking about, and of course, we consistently always push aside thinking about our own mortality because–well, because no good can come of it, really, other than paralyzing depression and panic about the shortening of the life string held by the Three Fates. I have become very used to the idea that I am not going to be able to write all the things that I want to write in the limited time I have left to me (see what I mean about paralyzing depression? Just typing those words made my entire body shudder), particularly with all the new ideas I get on an almost daily basis.

And the more research I do about New Orleans and Louisiana history, the more fascinated I become. I was actually thinking the other day, as I idly went down a research wormhole about Alice Heine (the first American born princess of Monaco was NOT Grace Kelly, but Alice Heine–born and raised in the 900 block of the French Quarter in New Orleans), I couldn’t help but think man, I should have started studying all this New Orleans/Louisiana history YEARS ago–at least when we first moved here. There is so much rich, vibrant material in New Orleans’ checkered history; and when you expand it out to Louisiana as a whole, it becomes even more interesting. I had, in fact, primarily always assumed the prevalence of Spanish names in the state and region came from when the Spanish owned Louisiana….which in a way it kind of did; but it was because to populate their new lands and territories as a protective measure against both the British and the Americans, the Spanish governors encouraged immigration from the Canary Islands–their descendants are called los isleños; I knew about the isleños, but I never really knew when they came here and to what part of Louisiana they came. (There was also a Filipino settlement at a place called St Málo; outside the levees, that settlement was completely destroyed by a hurricane in the early twentieth century…which just goes to show precisely how much of a cultural and ethnic melting pot New Orleans is and always has been.) It’s all so goddamned interesting…the main problem is the older books about the state and city’s history aren’t necessarily reliable–Lyle Saxon, Harnett Kane, and Robert Tallant, in particular; their works weren’t always based in fact but in rumor and legend, and all too often in upholding white supremacy–but the stories are highly entertaining, if inaccurate, biased, and with perhaps too high a degree of fictionality built into them. But the stories themselves are interesting and could make for good stories–in particular Tallant’s book Ready to Hang: Seven Famous New Orleans Murders, (one can never go wrong with historical true crime, even if Tallant’s sources were faulty and included rumor and speculation)…the title tale is, in and of itself, one I’ve been interested in fictionalizing since I first became aware of it–I can’t recall the murderer’s name, but a very good-looking young man, he used to lure men in to rob and kill; and while he always had a girlfriend–sometimes accomplices–and Tallant never comes right out and says so, my takeaway from the story is that the guy basically preyed on older men with either gay or bisexual tendencies, which puts it right into my wheelhouse, really.

And of course, so many of these stories would work in my Sherlockian world of New Orleans in the first decades of the twentieth century.

And this, you see, is why I will never be able to write everything I want to write. Heavy sigh.

And on that note, I am heading into the spice mines. May your day be as splendid as you are, Constant Reader, and I’ll catch you again tomorrow morning.

Save the Best for Last

Thursday!

My Bouchercon homework continues, with me now reading James Ziskin’s Cast the First Stone. I am very excited to read this; I’ve heard nothing but great things about his books, plus he’s a pretty good guy. I had bought the first in his series–still in the TBR pile, alas–so am kind of glad that this book became a homework assignment. I am really enjoying it thus far, and if it’s going where I think it may be going–well, that would be awesome, but I am sure I am going to love it even if it doesn’t.

I started watching the BBC series The Musketeers on Hulu this evening. I did a half-day today; one of my co-workers and I tested at a conference at the Riverside Hilton for four hours, after which I walked home on an afternoon in August. Heavy sigh. Any way, ’tis a good thing I did work only half-a-day, because alas we are having to clean everything in the house because Scooter had a couple of fleas. His medication is working–the fleas we’ve found were dying or dead–but it’s August and we live in a swamp, and so while there have been no signs of infestation thus far, we aren’t going to take the risk. So I’ve been cleaning all day ever since I got home; taking breaks now and then to watch something on the television, and having it on as I launder things and vacuum things and well, it needed to be done, didn’t it?

That’s a rather tired and round about way of getting to the point, isn’t it? Long story short: I’ve always been a big fan of The Three Musketeers, ever since I was a kid, and I’ve been meaning to watch this BBC series for years…but kept forgetting about it. Someone posted somewhere on Facebook last night asking people to name their favorite d’Artagnan, and as I always do, whenever I get the chance, I replied Always Michael York. Always. But someone else posted a picture of the young actor who plays him in the television series and I thought, yes, I’d been meaning to watch that, hadn’t I? So I watched a couple of episodes as I cleaned–and am intrigued. More watching is most definitely called for.

Next up in Florida Happens is “A Postcard for the Dead”, by Susanna Calkins.

Born and raised in Philadelphia, Susanna Calkins lives outside Chicago with her husband and two sons. Holding a PhD in history, Susanna writes the award-winning Lucy Campion historical mysteries as well as the forthcoming Speakeasy Murders, both from St. Martin’s Minotaur. Murder Knocks Twice, set in Prohibition-Era Chicago, will be out Spring 2019. Her first short story, “The Trial of Madame Pelletier,” featuring a 19th century poisoning case, is up for an Anthony Award (and can be read on her website at www.susannacalkins.com).

Susanna says: “A POSTCARD FOR THE DEAD” is my second published short story. When I saw the call for the Bouchercon anthology, on a whim I began to read through 1920s Florida newspapers, since I was already researching the Roaring Twenties for my Prohibition-Era novels. There, I stumbled across the rather odd story of Lena Clarke, a postmistress who had embezzled huge amounts of money from the Post Office and then framed a local playboy for the crime. What struck me most about this story was how Lena gave her testimony in court using a crystal ball, having been part of a wild West Palm Beach Bohemian set, before being declared insane. Although I altered the case substantially in my version, I retained the embezzlement aspect and of course the crystal ball. After a little more digging, l discovered that Lena’s brother had died of a snakebite, which just seemed too Florida of a detail not too include. I thought about setting the story in a courtroom, but given that my FIRST short story, “The Trial of Madame Pelletier” featured, well, a trial, I thought I’d better frame it a little differently.

Calkins author photo outside

West Palm Beach, Florida

July 1921

Lily Baker peered inside her mailbox before reaching in to retrieve her mail. Back when her half-brother had been West Palm Beach’s postmaster, he had delighted in leaving snakes in mailboxes as pranks. Of course, the last laugh had been on him, when he had died of a snake bite last Christmas.

There was only one piece of mail today, though—a postcard featuring a swanky hotel in Orlando, a city she’d never been. She turned it over to read the message but was surprised to find it blank. Only her name and address had been printed on the postcard, in careful block letters.

Curiously, she studied the card. The stamp had been cancelled in Orlando two days before. July 27, 1921. Flipping the card back over, she looked at the picture more closely. The hotel was the San Juan, which the postcard informed her had been built in 1885 by C.E. Pierce. Built for the filthy rich, from the looks of it.

#

Lily was still by her mailbox when she saw Officer Danny Jamison coming down the street on his bicycle.  She had known Officer Jamison since they were kids—he’d been just one year ahead of her in school. After high school they’d gone in different directions, although on occasion their paths crossed. She was about to wave as he passed by, when instead he stopped in front of her and dismounted his bike in one easy move.

“Hey Lily,” he said, leaning his bike against her palm tree. “Your sister around?”

Lily shifted from one foot to the other. Why was Danny asking after Junie? Though she and her older half-sister had lived together since their parents had passed away a few years before, Junie tended to be tight-lipped about her goings-on. But Lily would catch whispers about illicit gin, late night séances, Ouija parties, and other secret doings connected with West Palm Beach’s furtive Bohemian scene. A far cry from her day job heading the town’s Post Office, which Junie had taken over from their brother some eight months before.  “She must have left for work early,” Lily said.  “I didn’t see her this morning.”

“I see. But you saw her last night?”

Great beginning, right? It’s a terrific story, but what I think I enjoyed the most about it was the narrator’s voice; I really liked the character of Lily, how Calkins gradually let us into Lily’s life, and through character, built a very clever crime story.

Crimson and Clover

Constant Reader knows I love history.

One of the (many) reasons I didn’t major in history was because I really couldn’t pick a period to specialize in; there are so many different periods of history that fascinate me. I talk on here a lot about the sixteenth century, but I am also interested in the seventeenth. I’ve actually been toying with a book idea set in that century for going on ten years now; periodically I will read some history of that century as background, but there is still so much I don’t know. I am reading Royal Renegades right now, about the children of Charles I of England–fascinating stuff; I knew basics about the English Civil War but not a lot–and the Stuarts of that period were particularly entwined with France. Charles I’s wife was Henrietta Maria, youngest sister of Louis XIII and aunt to Louis XIV; she fled to France for safety and some of the royal Stuart children also made it over there at some point. Henrietta Anna, Charles I’s youngest daughter, grew up at the French court; she eventually married Louis XIV’s brother, Philippe, the Duc d’Orleans.

And therein lies a tale.

My interest in Louis XIV–and Versailles–led me to discover that the Sun King’s younger brother, Philippe (whose existence, for that matter, completely invalidated the plot of Dumas’ The Man in the Iron Mask, although I’ve always loved that story), was, if not a gay man, then bisexual: he had children by both his first wife, Henriette Anna Stuart, and his second, Elisabeth Charlotte, Princess Palatine. In fact, Philippe is called the Father of Europe because all of European royalty in the nineteenth century were his descendants.

As a small child reading history, I picked up on the homosexuality that most historians always tried to gloss over (Edward II and Piers Gaveston; James I and first Robert Carr, later George Villiers; Richard the Lion-Hearted; Henri III of France; etc) but there was never any real attempt to gloss over Monsieur’s (Philippe was known throughout his life as Monsieur, after the death of his uncle Gaston, from whom he inherited that particular title as well as the title of duc d’Orleans) sexuality. He had a long term relationship with the Chevalier de Lorraine, which started when he was a young man and lasted until the Chevalier’s death. Monsieur’s first wife put up with it but didn’t care for it; his second wife didn’t care one way or the other.

The story goes that his mother, Anne of Austria, made him that way–which is, in modern times, a laughable thought (a domineering mother, etc etc etc)–by dressing him as a girl when he was a child, and continuing to do so after he was of an age to start wearing male clothing. Apparently, Queen Anne was concerned that Louis XIV and his younger brother would have an adversarial relationship the way her husband Louis XIII had with his own younger brother, Gaston. The troubled marriage of Louis XIII and his Spanish wife is also fascinating; they were married very young, she had two miscarriages, and he blamed her for the second one and they became estranged, not living together as man and wife for a very long time afterwards (the second miscarriage was around 1619, I believe; Louis XIV was not born until 1638 and his younger brother in 1640)–this estrangement between King and Queen–and the way George Villiers, Duke of Buckingham shamelessly flirted with Queen Anne when he came to Paris to negotiate the marriage of Charles I to Henrietta Maria–were the seeds from which Dumas also wrote The Three Musketeers.

Since so much time had passed (almost nineteen years) since Louis XIII last slept with Queen Anne, there were lots of rumors and talk that her two sons were not Louis XIII’s; there are many who believed Cardinal Richelieu fathered the boys with the Queen (fictionalized in Evelyn Anthony’s The Cardinal and the Queen); but there was never any question that the two boys were Bourbons. (Like the Hapsburgs with their genetic ‘jaw’, the Bourbon ‘nose’ was also relatively famous; both Louis and Philippe had the nose–but then that could simply mean that their father was a Bourbon rather than confirmation that Louis XIII was)

Monsieur often dressed as a woman for court functions, even as an adult; despite this proclivity he was a great soldier and commander of the French army–he was so successful in the field that his brother was jealous of his successes and often removed him from command.

His second wife was a diarist and a compulsive letter writer; her memoirs and letters are one of the best sources for information about life at the court of Louis XIV.

I’ve always been a little surprised that, while there are scores of biographies of Louis XIV (who, despite his incredible ego, wasn’t as great a king as he thought he was; he accomplished a lot but he also succeeded in planting the seeds for the French Revolution and creating the court system that also played a big part in the downfall of his dynasty. He also wasn’t successful militarily and diplomatically; his wars were expensive and ruinous–although all of Europe had to unite against him in order to beat him.) there are very few, if any, of Monsieur. I would think a biography of him would be something a gay historian would be interested in writing, because of the ability to look at his sexuality, his difference from the others at court, and how, as a prince, he was able to be himself–despite his own religious mania, Louis XIV never seemed to care about Monsieur’s proclivities–and on his own terms. Not to mention how incredibly difficult and strange it would have been to be the younger brother of the egomaniacal Sun King.

Was Monsieur gay? Bisexual? Transgender? Was this a result of his mother dressing him as a girl when he was young or was that just a coincidence?

As I said, the seventeenth century is interesting. And a lot was going on as well–the Thirty Years’ War was the last European war over religion; there were civil wars in both France and England; the colonizing of North America by the British, French, and Spanish truly got into full swing; and it was also the time, of course, of Cardinal Richelieu, the first great modern statesmen.

I hope to write this book someday. But in the meantime, I am having a great time doing the background research.

And now, back to the spice mines.