Tag: Angela Lansbury

Somebody’s Watching Me

A month or so ago, Ira Levin’s A Kiss Before Dying was one of those “special deals for ebooks,” and I can never pass up a classic for a mere $1.99 (I generally replace my hard copy books with ebooks when they are on sale, so I can donate the real book; but Ira Levin novels will never be donated), which put me in mind of him again (the book is a crime fiction classic), and I started thinking about what is the best part of two of my favorites by him, Rosemary’s Baby and The Stepford Wives, which is the slow build of paranoia until the heroines are completely convinced that everyone is in on it and there’s no one she can trust. This is what I consider “women’s noir,” which is books that depict and explore women’s fears (which is why Gothics were so popular, I think; the wife can never trust the husband and always thinks he is trying to kill her–before the real culprit is exposed and they have their happily ever after. This, to me, mimics what it’s like for a woman when she gets married in real life; she wants to believe in her marriage and love, but how many times has that turned to ashes and dust in reality? Husbands kill wives or cheat on them or leave them; all these marriage fears were tentpoles of Gothics). I was going to revisit both novels–I had some other things I wanted to talk about with The Stepford Wives, and its similarities to Rosemary’s Baby, but I couldn’t find my copy of the latter so went with the former.

Since 2015, the term “gaslighting” has come back into vogue, with small wonder. Gaslighting can make you question your own judgment and your grasp on reality1; something many of us have experienced over the past nearly ten years and it isn’t an enjoyable experience.

Paranoia, combined with not being believed, makes for a fantastic novel that is very difficult to pull off; I can think of any number of films and books that use paranoia as a driving theme for their plots, and I always enjoy them. There really is nothing more frustrating than being being not believed about something that’s happened–or is happening–to you. It can make you crazy, make you question yourself and your own grasp of reality. It’s horrible and cruel in reality, and it’s something everyone can relate to because we have all not been believed at some point in our lives. It’s happened to me enough times (including losing jobs) that it certainly resonates with me. (I have an idea for a gaslighting/paranoia short story that I’ve been wanting to write for some time now.)

So, needless to say, I greatly enjoyed reading my advance copy of Alison Gaylin’s upcoming January release, We Are Watching.

It’s been the longest day of Meg Russo’s life, and it isn’t even half over. Her stomach gnaws at her, her hands heavy on the steering wheel. But when she glances at the clock on the dashboard, she sees that it’s a little shy of 11:30 a.m., which means that Meg, her husband, Justin, and their daugheter, Lily, have only been on the road for an hour. They’ve got at least three more hours on the thruway, and then they’ll have to contend with the series of veinlike country roads Meg and Justin haven’t traversed since their own college days. If they don’t hit too much traffic, they should be in Ithaca by five, which now feels like some point in a future so distant, Meg is incapable of envisioning it.

Time is strange that, the past eighteen years zooming by in an instant, all of it leading up to a single day that’s already lasted eons. Meg blames the stress of last night, wanting everything to be perfect for their daughter’s send-off, which led to thoughts of Lily’s first visit home for Thanksgiving break, which in turn made Meg think for the millionth time about how cold their house gets in the fall, and how Lily always complains about it. New windows, Meg had thought, lying in bed with her eyes open, envisioning insulated windows to replace those paper-thin sheets of glass, the same windows that were here when she and Justin bought the place twenty years ago–and it was a fixer-upper then. What if Lily came home to new windows? Meg mused, still awake in the wee hours of the morning. Will she have changed by then? Will she have grown too sophisticated to get excited over a warmer house? And so on, until the sky was pink and it was time to wake up and Meg had barely slept at all.

I’ve enjoyed Alison Gaylin’s work since I first read And She Was back in 2012, and have been a fan ever since, gobbling up each new book as she releases them. She has always been a terrific novelist, but what has been amazing to watch is how she pushes herself to do better with each book, tackling bigger themes and creating believable, relatable characters you can’t help but want to root for. We Are Watching may be her best yet, starting as a slow burn but building into an adrenaline boosting rollercoaster of a thriller.

The book opens with Meg and Justin taking their daughter Lily off to college, with all the emotions and fears and sense of loss that comes with a child leaving home and starting to move into their adulthood. Meg is likable, and so is her family. But as they drive a carload of skinheads pulls up alongside of them and start taking pictures. Meg reacts very strongly–so strongly that even I was like take a chill pill, girl!–which eventually leads to a crash that kills Justin, leaving the two women shattered shells of their previous selves. Lily decides to take time off from college and even Meg becomes housebound, despite needing to run her book store in the small Hudson Valley town they live in.

But things slowly begin closing in on both Meg and Lily; who were those skinheads in the other car? Why are truly strange, cult-like people showing up in the store or in town, chanting weird things at them? As Meg’s paranoia and fear grows, it soon becomes apparent that a religious cult is targeting her and her family, but why? But to find the truth, Meg has to not only survive the cult, which seems determined to kill her and her child, but when she has the time, to dig back into her own past to discover the truth–because the truth is the only thing that can set them free.

This book is fantastic, and I couldn’t put it down. It has all the hallmarks of a great Gaylin novel–a compelling and relatable main character doing the best she can in a terrible situation; a twisty plot full of surprises; and the kind of strong writing that makes her sentences and paragraphs sing.

Preorder it now and thank me in January when you finish reading it.

  1. The film this term comes from, Gaslight, is a great movie and Ingrid Bergman is terrific as the wife who isn’t sure if she is losing her mind; she deserved her Oscar and the film still holds up–and a very young Angela Lansbury makes her screen debut in it. ↩︎

Tomorrow Belongs to Me

Ah, Cabaret.

I first became aware of this movie from commercials on television, and it looked very weird to young Greg. I had no idea what the movie was about, other than it was a musical; starred Liza Minnelli; also had the gorgeous Michael York in the cast; and seemed to be set in old pre-Nazi Germany. It also came out in the same year as The Godfather, which sucked all the air out of the year when it comes to film. I had also read that book that year because of the movie…which also got me interested in Marlon Brando, which is a whole other entry. (Not to mention the sex scenes, which were really confusing in a lot of ways…especially Lucy Mancini’s over-large vagina.) But Liza was everywhere that year, too–every talk show, had her own special “Liza with a Z”, magazine covers and newspapers and periodicals like you wouldn’t believe.

I had no clue what the plot was, other than decadence and debauchery?

I remember asking a friend that year if she knew what Cabaret was about–her parents were European immigrants from after the war; her father was Czech and mother German–and she told me her parents had seen it and her mother said, “It’s all about homosexuals”, which naturally got me incredibly interested in the movie. I finally saw it several years later when it aired on television, but everything queer was sliced out of the movie and it was disjointed and didn’t make a lot of sense, so I thought well, that was shit, how did it win all those Oscars?

Because of course, all the queer stuff has been excised from the movie; the movie was basically castrated and to me, seemed like nothing more than a vehicle to move the movie along to the next musical number–many musicals are like this, so I really didn’t understand what the big deal was about this one.

A few years later, I caught the original uncut version on HBO…and have been a fan ever since.

Cabaret never should have been sold to television for airing because it had to be gutted to make it ready for prime time. I only hope no one involved with the film saw that version of it, but it really was a desecration.

By the time I saw the movie as Bob Fosse originally intended it to be seen, I had become aware of the source material: Goodbye to Berlin by Christopher Isherwood, an autobiographical novel about his experiences in Weimar Berlin and witnessing the rise of the Nazis–and how their malevolence was poisoning German society and culture. It had been adapted for the stage by John Van Druten as I Am a Camera (which is the opening sentence of the second paragraph of the book), and the play was also filmed, starring Julie Harris, who may have played Sally on stage, too. I Am a Camera was adapted into the musical Cabaret, but significant changes were made from the stage version of the musical in adapting it for the screen–and the screen adaptation also wound up causing the stage version to revised, remodeled, and reinvented as well. (And to make things even more confusing, Isherwood later wrote a memoir about that time period in Berlin called Christopher and His Kind, which was also filmed.)

I had not seen the earlier film, nor had I read the book when I saw the uncut version of Cabaret.

And you really couldn’t go wrong casting Michael York in the 1970s. Stunningly handsome, and that velvety voice that just dripped syrup.

I mean, really. I think this is from Something for Everyone, which is a great, little-known queer movie also starring Angela Lansbury! (There’s a watchable version uploaded to Youtube, but the sound and picture quality isn’t great.)

I rewatch the film every now and then. I went through an Isherwood phase in the late 90’s/early aughts, when I read everything he wrote, and I enjoyed them all. And when I see some political movements today (hello, MAGAts!), Cabaret is never far from my mind.

It’s astonishing that the film was even made, given that homosexuality was still considered a mental illness in 1972, and the film didn’t judge. It simply presented these alternative sexualities as normal, and while the times themselves weren’t normal, there was also a very strong sense that the Weimar period–which is endlessly fascinating, which is one of many reasons I love Babylon Berlin so much–that filled the German political vacuum between the wars wasn’t very different from the twenties everywhere else, either; a time when the society and culture rejected the old, more conservative times that led to the first war, and everyone just wanted to have a good time because so much was misery. (I often wonder how much the American Stock Market crash of 1929 had to do with the rise of fascism in Germany; it was the economy, after all, that really caused the problems, and wasn’t the global economy heavily impacted by the collapse of Wall Street? We never realize how what happens in our country affects the rest of the world, because the United States is just as narcissistic as the convicted felon the Republicans are running.)

But the underlying message of Cabaret is one that is hard to miss: that living in your own bubble and ignoring the world outside is precisely how garbage like the Nazis rise to power…the assumption that someone else will do something to take care of it, and we’ll just keep having fun. In the late 1980s and early 1990s I thought we as a country we’re headed down that path; the unholy marriage between the right wing and evangelical christianity (I will never capitalize that C because cults don’t deserve that respect) certainly made it very clear to me that there was a very large segment of the American population that would be more than happy to put all racialized people and queer people into death camps. (I even started toying with the idea for a novel about that very thing; I still think about that idea A LOT, and even more so since 2016–which is also when I started rewatching Cabaret again on a more regular basis. Cabaret, and Bob Fosse’s vision of what it should be, was very powerful; and it changed the face of what movie musicals looked like and could be, and has influenced stage and screen musicals ever since. It’s a stunningly shot film, and now I can say that I understand why Fosse won the Oscar instead of Francis Ford Coppola for The Godfather; both films are masterpieces, but Cabaret was more “showy,” and that always wins over diligent and detailed craft.

And no, the movie isn’t “all about homosexuals”–even though there’s a minor character who is a trans woman; the main character is gay and bi-curious, and Max, Sally’s other love interest, is also bi and sleeps with them both cheerily. That was VERY avant-garde attitude to have in a 1972 Hollywood movie made for American audiences.

I wonder how seeing it on the screen in 1972 might have impacted me? But I also can’t imagine my mother and sister sitting through it, either.

Cabaret is a must-see if you’re interested in queer film–or great American cinema, for that matter. And I will judge you for not seeing it. In fact, I’m doing that right now.

Home Cooking

I don’t remember how I initially stumbled across a movie from 1970 (or 1971, could have been 1969 for that matter) called Something for Everyone; all I know was it was during the pandemic. It’s a very dark comedy, and it’s so queer you’ll be amazed that it was from that time period. It was directed by Harold Prince (yes, that Harold Prince), and starred beautiful young Michael York and a glamorous post-Mame-on-Broadway Angela Lansbury. I loved the film, and really, if anything, it has a lot more in common with Saltburn than The Talented Mr. Ripley does. So when I watched it, I was delighted to see that it, like so many films, was based on a book, and I decided I wanted to read said book, The Cook by Harry Kressing.

“Based on” as it turned out, was a bit of a stretch.

One hill stood out. It was steeper than the others, and higher. Also, it had no peak. While the rounded, wooded tops of the surrounding hills undulated, one into the other, this one broke the rhythm with an abrupt, flat surface.

For a few minutes Conrad just stared, shielding his eyes from the sun. Then he dismounted and dragged his bicycle off the road. When he was out of sight he chained it to a tree and concealed his rucksack under some brush. Then he started up the hill.

It was an easy climb until near the top. There he discovered a sheer cliff. It was at least twenty feet high. But if it ran all the way around no one would be able to reach the plateau.

Nevertheless, he circumambulated rather more than half the hill without finding a break in the cliff face. He began to have doubts. Possibly ladders were required. They could be brought, or lowered down.

Disappointed, he increased his pace.

In his haste he nearly missed the stairway cut in the cliff face. The steps were very narrow and high, and at a nasty angle.

When he gained the plateau he encountered another barrier: a deep moat, with water in the bottom and smooth, sheer sides, encircled the fantastic castle-like structure. There was a single drawbridge, up and locked. There was absolutely no way across.

For the record, if you are ever asked for an example of a movie that’s better than the book, feel free to use The Cook filmed as Something for Everyone, because the movie is much better.

I’m not sure what I was expecting from the cook, but the underlying story, the theme, has to do with Conrad’s obsession with a castle that has been abandoned because the family that owns it no longer can afford to maintain it and have moved out to a smaller mansion. Both the book and the movie follow this central premise, the difference being the queerness. The Cook’s queerness comes from it’s upset of the status quo; someone coming along who takes charge of all the folks in this small area of Germany who are all just drifting along in their lives lazily. In the book, this is because he is such a master of cooking that no one can resist giving him what he wants once he feeds them. His mastery of cooking is so complete that he can make a delicious diet for someone and they can eat everything they want and lose weight; if they need to gain weight he can feed them to that end. Feeling ill? His meal will cure you, and on and on.

The book is more of a fairy tale with a primary moral to it–don’t be seduced by pleasure. In the book, the pleasure all comes from food and Conrad’s mastery is gained by his skills, and his strength of will. His dream is to have banquets of incredible food and great conversation in the castle, so he starts training his employers to be good hosts, spending money on serving wear of which they could be proud, and so on. The villagers and the family, which he marries into, eventually become such gluttons that no one ever leaves the palace and everything goes to waste. It’s a dark little story, very moralistic and very Kafka-esque in writing style.

I enjoyed the book, but I enjoyed the film much more. I watched it on Youtube, and I wish it could be restored digitally and released to streaming. I liked that the film had the same moral–only in the movie it was Michael York’s beauty and sexuality that provided the convincing pleasure to everyone involved. This would be an excellent film to remake with one of our amazingly sexy, beautiful and talented crop of young actors.

Cathouse Blues

Monday morning and I am off to the office to cover for a co-worker rather than work at home. This works because my work-at-home day this week will be Friday, and then the next week it will be Monday again, so I’ll have four days of not going into the office around my birthday, which is kind of nice. I didn’t have any trouble getting up this morning–I woke up actually at 5:58 and stayed in bed through another two snooze cycles starting at 6, as usual–and now I sit, swilling coffee and feeling awake, as the clock inevitably makes its way to the time when I have to start getting ready to leave for work.

Costco was delivered yesterday, and it really is a remarkable convenience. I still need to run past their actual store one night after work this week–some things can’t be delivered, or they don’t offer them for delivery; it’s also entirely possible they do have the stuff in stock just don’t deliver it and that’s why I want to run by just to make sure. It’ll be an easy in-and-out, and after work one day should do the trick, I would think.

It’s weird going in on Monday morning and getting up so early an extra morning this week–I don’t have to stay the entire shift today, so will most likely leave earlier than I usually do on my day shifts in the office. I suspect we’re going to go back to our old way of doing things in September at last, and I am hoping that means I can swing back around to evening shifts once again–which would be super lovely. An adjustment again, to be sure, but one that should be much easier than adjusting to getting up early every morning, which goes against every grain and fiber of my being.

Heavy sigh.

I didn’t get a lot of writing done this past weekend–not really a surprise, to be honest–but I was pretty worn down by the time the weekend rolled around again, and so I am not terribly surprised I didn’t get a lot of work done this weekend. By the time I got home on Friday I was feeling fatigued already, and of course, I didn’t have much energy the entire weekend, either. Which is fine–I was able to do things that didn’t require much thinking, like cleaning and so forth–and while my mind couldn’t really wrap around reading over the weekend, I did start rereading my Sandman graphic novels, which help make the show even more enjoyable, to be honest; seeing how well the books were adapted into the show–well, I may need to watch the show again because I can’t stop thinking about it and the concepts it explored. It really is an exceptional television experience. We also got caught up on Five Days at Memorial, which I didn’t realize was still airing, so we are caught up on everything available, and we also caught up on American Horror Stories–the last two episodes were vastly superior to the first two, but still, not the greatest–and I also watched The Manchurian Candidate (the original, with Sinatra and Angela Lansbury) for the first time; it was a bit dated, and I also couldn’t help but think how much better it would have been if someone like Montgomery Clift or Paul Newman had played the male lead rather than Sinatra (I’ve never been much of a fan of his acting, really). It was interesting, and of course Paul didn’t see the big twist coming–the Angela Lansbury thing–and she was fantastic. It was also very much of its time–Communist scare, evil Soviet and Chinese Communists, brainwashing–but I’d also like to go back and read the novel on which it was based at some point.

I have an errand to run today after work–picking up a prescription–which is why I am wondering if it would be smart to swing by Costco on my way home; I can catch I-10 right here outside the office and be there in like five minutes, give or take, plus it’s much easier to get uptown from Costco. Decisions, decisions–but why not get it all over with tonight, then go home and shave my head and face for the week? It does make the most sense. Ah, well, no need to decide now.

And on that note, this is my birthday week–I will be sixty-one on Saturday, ee-yikes!–which only bears mentioning (it’s not something I care about excessively, to be honest) because all of my social media will announce it eventually this week at any rate. So I am heading in to the spice mines; y’all have a marvelous Monday!

I Feel the Earth Move

I indulged myself by staying in bed until almost nine this morning–I know, right? I woke up at three and again at five (like every other night this week; this is a trend in my sleep that I am not liking all that much), but stayed in bed. Now that I am up, it’s gray and wet and gloomy outside; maybe it was rain that kept me in bed. What is it about rain and being safe and dry and warm that feels so comforting? I wish I knew. I am also trying to decide this morning over my coffee whether I want to leave the house today. I should swing by the mail and maybe make some groceries and get gas for the car; I also need to get my taxes together, work on my short story, and some other things. I also want to spend some time with Chris Holm’s Child Zero today (and this weekend). I should also brainstorm some more plot ideas for the two books I’ll be working on this year, and once I get this story in some sort of shape I want to go back to “Never Kiss a Stranger” and “Festival of the Redeemer” and some other stories. I had pretty much decided to use April to do clean-up on some things–finishing stories etc–and now it is April; how delightful is that? I can hear thunder, which makes leaving the house seem even more undesirable; I’ve not checked today’s weather. Paul is seeing his trainer today, and instead of going to the office immediately after he’ll be coming home. I think we might (I might) rent Spiderman No Way Home today; we started watching Death on the Nile last night on Hulu but bailed on it when the first ads popped up in mid-scene; at least on a broadcast network, they plan where the commercials will go so a character won’t get cut off in mid-sentence. I am really starting to dislike Hulu’s services for streaming; I remember trying Youtube TV and hating it because it’s interface was useless and difficult to navigate. I really would prefer not to go back to cable under any circumstance; I despise Cox with every fiber of my being. The great irony was the reason I chose Hulu in the first place for a streaming service was because their interface was intuitive and incredibly easy; so naturally they keep changing it and making it less user friendly. (Although to be honest, I was only interested in watching Death on the Nile in order to see Egypt; there’s no way this newer version can possibly top the original with Angela Lansbury, Bette Davis, and Maggie Smith.) Instead we turned over to Netflix and dove into the second season of Dark Desire, which got us caught up in the story immediately.

We wound up going to Costco last night after Paul got home from work to get it out of the way. I also had to take Scooter to the vet for his biannual senior kitty workup–dropping him off and picking him back up later–and I think the Costco trip wore me out. Why is Costco so tiring for me? I hope someday to have a better understanding of that. And we spent a lot of money but it didn’t seem to me like we got as much stuff as we usually do? I don’t understand–will probably never understand that, but I suppose it’s prices going up everywhere that is to blame.

Ooh, it just got darker, which means storm a coming. Ah, there’s the thunder. And it lasted quite a while, too….I suppose I should check the weather.

Ah, rain all morning and then sunny the rest of the day. That I can live with. It also solves the problem of what to do about the errands–run them today or wait? The mail can wait until Monday; there’s no rush to getting it, after all, and I could always just run to the Rouse’s in the CBD to pick up the few things I do actually need. Decisions, decisions.

Ah, there’s the lightning and the rain and even more thunder. I may have to turn on a light, it’s gotten so dark.

I do love New Orleans rain; I’ve never lived any place where it rains the way it does here. I mean, it fucking pours down here, coming down so hard and fast that the drains (and pumps) take a good while to catch up with it. I own about twenty umbrellas as a result of being caught in the rain unexpectedly; it can also go from hot, humid and not a cloud in the sky to a torrential downpour with street flooding in a matter of minutes. Although this doesn’t seem like one of those street-flooding monster storms; this seems more like a oh the greenery needs watering kind of rains. Doesn’t mean it can’t turn even uglier as I sit here typing, but hey. It’s still one of those chill damp mornings where curling up under a blanket with my coffee sounds vastly more appealing than any of the other dreadful things I need to do today–dreadful might be a bit harsh, but unpleasant certainly doesn’t miss the mark nearly as much.

So on that note, I am going to get another cup of coffee and head over to my easy chair to spend an hour with Child Zero–I’ll figure out the rest of the day when that hour is up.

Have a happy Saturday, Constant Reader.

Shake it Up

Well, I wrote the timeline for Bury Me in Shadows last night–lame as it was; I am waiting for my editor to write me back and say, um, you could have made more of an effort on this. But it’s done, and I am well relieved to be out of those woods–for now, at any rate. I am kind of mentally fatigued; two books back to back like this will tend to do that to one–although I used to do it all the time; book after book after book. But I also didn’t used to have to get up at six three days a week, either, nor did I ever have the insomnia issues like I do these days. Last night was another of those nights where Morpheus chose to not visit my bed, but I feel relatively okay at the moment, as I swill my first cappuccino. I am sure I will hit a wall later today. Tonight is also supposed to be a gym night, but…we’ll see how that goes.

I’ve decided to put aside the Thomas Perry novel for now. It’s very well done, but I am not connecting with it, which is more my problem than Perry’s; I am just not in the mind space right now for a hired killer thriller. I’ll come back to it at some point, I am sure; so it goes back into the TBR pile rather than into the donation box. I’ve actually gone on a tear with buying ebooks on sale (or for free) lately, and I’ve also gotten some wonderful e-galleys stored in my iPad–including this year’s titles from Laura Lippman and Alison Gaylin, not to mention some sparkling debuts and some wonderful classics. Yesterday I finally figured out how to sort my ebooks (I am such a Luddite) in the iPad by title, so I could see how many duplicates there were–and there were quite a few, so I deleted all the duplicates to free up space as well as make it easier to find things in there. I think when I go visit my parents, I may just take my iPad instead of books with me to read–although I am taking the hard copy of From Here to Eternity with me–that way I can read through take-off and landing…although I suppose one could just put the device on airplane mode but I still think they make you power it down. It’s been so long since I’ve flown anywhere, it’s hard to remember. I just ordered some more books with points from credit cards that should be arriving this week–yes, yes, I know; I shouldn’t continue buying more books when I still have massive TBR piles–but I’ve cleaned out so many books over the past few months that I thought why not use the points and get some new titles, as well as the Laurie R. King backlist. I am still planning on reading something else before treating myself to A Letter of Mary–I just haven’t decided what just yet. I am torn between She Who Was No More by Pierre Boileau (which Les Diaboliques was based on) and The Cook by Harry Kressing, which was filmed as Something for Everyone with Michael York and Angela Lansbury–a classic and bizarre queer film from the early 1970’s–it’s on Youtube.

Or…maybe something else.

We watched another episode of The Innocent last night; this show is so damned good and full of didn’t-see-that-coming plot twists! Of all the Harlan Coben shows on Netflix, this is my favorite so far–not really surprising, since Paul and I have fallen in love with Spanish-language crime shows (cannot WAIT for season 4 of Elite to drop)–we talked about this last night, and Paul said–and I agree–this particular show wouldn’t be as good in English, or if it was set in the US or England or France.

Of course, hot Spanish and/or Mexican actors might play a part in our thought process. Just sayin’.

I also have a story in yet another anthology that is dropping in June and can be preordered now: Unburied, edited by Rebecca Rowland, from Dark Ink Press. My story is “Night Follows Night”; which I wrote an original draft of years ago for an MWA anthology–I think–that didn’t get accepted. I revised and rewrote it a number of times, and when this call for submissions was forwarded to me by Felice Picano (thanks, Felice!) I thought, well, “Night Follows Night” loosely fits this call, and sent it off–and was very delighted to hear back from Rebecca that she loved it and wanted it. Yay! This was the same period last year where I sent off five stories in one day and sold three of them within 24 hours–which was exactly what I needed to have happen at the time, as I was going through one of my malaise periods…nothing like selling three stories in less than twenty-four hours to get you past that hump (the other two were rejected, but that was expected; they were long-shots to begin with).

And on that note, tis off to the spice mines with me. I hope I have enough energy to make it through this day–I was planning on going to the gym tonight, but the lack of sleep for two days running means that probably won’t happen….

New Year’s Day

2021 dawns, and theoretically, at any rate, it’s a new year and a fresh start–at least that’s the mentality everyone else seems to embrace. I don’t get it, myself, never really have. But far be it from me to rain on anybody’s parade–or their New Year’s hangovers.

It’s a lovely morning again in New Orleans; blue skies and sunshine. I’m going to swill down some coffee this morning and then head to the gym–they are only open until 2 this afternoon–before coming home to put one last coat of polish on Bury Me in Shadows before I turn it in, on time, later today. I finished it last evening–there are still some holes in the plot that need filling, as well as some contradictory elements I need to catch–but it’s essentially finished. I have not, in fact, finished a book since early 2019, when I turned in Royal Street Reveillon; so it’s very nice to have another one done. I go back and forth between thinking it’s really good or the worst thing I’ve ever written, so there’s that part–par for the course, really.

I also got my first inoculation for the COVID-19 vaccination yesterday. It wasn’t so bad, really–my shoulder is kind of sore still this morning, glad I had them do my left arm–but I felt off for most of the rest of the day; which could have been the inoculation, could have just been the fact that I was tired. I’ve not really slept that great this week, and the fluctuations in the weather have not helped in the least–sinuses, you know–and I’ve not really had much of an appetite lately, either, so I’m probably experiencing low blood sugar and all of that. But the next inoculation will be in 28 days, and then my life sort of can go back to normal? Not really–I’ll still be wearing masks everywhere I go, and washing my hands religiously as often as I can, but at least I no longer have to worry (too much) that I am going to get infected and sick.

2020 was one of those years, like 2005, that we will look back on and wonder about. A lot of my memories of the year just past are foggy and gray; I don’t remember much of the year rather like I don’t really remember much of the year and a half after Katrina. It’s always weird when there’s a major world paradigm shift; Katrina really only affected those of us in Louisiana and Mississippi and coastal Alabama–while the rest of the country and world looked on in horror, they also were able to move on within a few weeks whereas we were not. The COVID-19 paradigm shift affected everyone in the world, and as we (hopefully) are beginning to move past it–which will not finally happen until we achieve herd immunity, and who knows how long that’s going to take–things aren’t going to go back the way they were before the world came to a screeching halt. Things have changed, whether for the better or not remains to be seen; but one lesson that everyone has learned is that almost everyone actually can work from home and be productive, something employers resisted like the plague before, you know, an actual plague forced them to adapt. Now businesses and companies have to ask themselves–do we really need all that overhead of having an actual office, when our staff can do their jobs efficiently and effectively from home? Same with book signings–publishers probably aren’t going to be paying to send their authors on tours anymore since virtual ones actually get a higher attendance. What about conferences? They also became virtual–but in all honesty, I will want to continue to go to in-person conferences once they are feasible; drinking at home on Zoom isn’t the same thing as hanging out in the bar with friends and laughing our asses off.

I do miss seeing my friends.

I usually set goals on New Year’s Day for the new year; I’ve not really put much thought into goals for 2021, to be honest. I did achieve one of my 2020 goals, despite the pandemic: getting back into a regular gym routine and going regularly. I’ve noticed a change in my body, even though I’m not really pushing myself as hard as I could–I don’t want to overdo it, nor do I want to injure myself again, which started the whole spiral ten years ago in the first place–but it’s nice to see my muscles hardening and getting more defined. My weight hasn’t changed at all, but I can see a difference in my face and my pants/shorts/sweatpants, which were already a bit too big, have gotten even bigger (I really need to wear a belt). I do want to continue focusing on taking care of myself a bit more in 2021; dental work and vision exams and new glasses and possibly the occasional massage. I have a number of secret projects lining up as well, which is kind of exciting, and of course, I need to finish the Kansas book now and I want to get to work on Chlorine. I think there’s probably another Scotty or two in my head, and I also want to experiment with novellas–I have at least three or four or five in progress, and I really need to finish them. I also want to get some more short stories finished and out for submission.

I watched a movie for the Cynical 70’s Film Festival yesterday afternoon as I made condom packs: Something for Everyone, starring Michael York and Angela Lansbury, based (or rather, according to the credits, “suggested by”) on the novel The Cook by Henry Kessing (recently brought back into print by Valancourt Books), which I recently read about as “the queerest movie of the 70’s”–and yes, it is indeed very queer. (It’s not streaming anywhere, but there’s a bootleg of it on Youtube, which is what I watched) It reminded me somewhat of The Talented Mr. Ripley in several ways, and it also made me think about how amazing Michael York would have been playing Tom Ripley. York plays Conrad, a drifter from no one knows where and, like Tom Ripley, we really never learn about his past or who he is. He shows up on screen in Bavaria, riding a bicycle and wearing cut off khaki trousers that are cut very high; Daisy Duke-ish in fact, and he looks splendidly beautiful and alluring in the German sun. He decides he wants to get a job working for the local impoverished Countess and her children, who no longer have the money to maintain their castle or live in it, but it’s entailed so they can’t sell it. (Neuschwanstein, the fairy castle of Mad King Ludwig of Bavaria–who was also queer) stands in for their castle.) Angela Lansbury plays the Countess, and she is truly splendid. Conrad begins killing people who get in his way, but is also doing it to help the family he now work for, while slowly seducing and sleeping with everyone in sight in order to get what he wants–he seduces the Countess’ son and eventually the Countess, and York is simply breathtakingly gorgeous to look at in all his youthful, lean beauty. (I had an enormous crush on him in the 1970’s.) But Angela Lansbury is truly fantastic. She’s beautiful and slender and elegant, and those expressive eyes are perfect for expressing the Countess’ malaise and ennui with her situation and with the world. Watching her slink around in gorgeous clothing, I could but marvel an wonder why she was never a bigger film star, and in all honesty, I’ve never really seen her as Mame Dennis before. Yes, I know she played the part on Broadway and it was a huge smash hit, but for me Rosalind Russell was definitive….but having watched this movie now, I am now convinced the casting of Lucille Ball as Mame in the film instead of Lansbury was an even bigger crime than I considered it before–I watched the Lucy version and it was awful; but the crime that was casting Ball is now even more egregious. I could literally imagine Lansbury as Mame as I watched this movie. It’s cynical and a bit cold, but it definitely fits into the Cynical 70’s Film Festival in that Conrad never is punished for any of his own crimes–he’s outwitted in the end, but not really punished…and knowing Conrad, I am also confident that at some point after the film ended he got the upper hand back.

And on that note, tis back to the spice mines with me. One more cup of coffee and I am off to the gym; and then its back to home and the grindstone. Happy New Year, everyone!