Tag: Appalachia

You’ll Think of Me

Work-at-home Friday, and not a single meeting on my agenda for the day. Huzzah! I really hate meetings; I always have, primarily because so many of them fall into the “this could have been an email” category.

Yesterday was a very good day. Yes, I was alone in the clinic yesterday without a nurse, but we weren’t terribly busy and I was able to get a lot of my Admin duties–the ones that have to be done in the office–finished. I am almost completely caught up on everything, and I have been doing a very good job of keeping up with everything rather than the ever-popular meh, I can do it tomorrow thinking I so often fall into. But I’ve not been tired this week, which probably had to do with the time change and sleeping an hour later (technically) than I was. Once I am used to it, I’ll probably go back to being sleepy and tired all the time again. Something to look forward to?

And in other delightful news, a jury of his peers found Sean Dunn not guilty of a misdemeanor for throwing a Subway sandwich at an ICE agent, or “assault with a deadly sandwich.” This entire case–and that this went to fucking trial–is yet another indicator of the Keystone Cops-like approach to governance in this current “administration” and its authoritarian Fascistic policies. My personal favorite was the “victim” testifying about his PTSD from the sandwich exploding…despite the fact the sandwich can clearly be seen afterward, on the ground, still in its wrapper. I guess Mr. Alpha Male Ice Agent will be forever traumatized by the smell of onions and mustard. Grow a pair, you little bitch–balls or ovaries, I don’t care which. And seriously, everyone–yes, their grasp on power means their idiocy and fascism is scary, but this is yet another example of what whiny cry-babies the right are. Fuck them and forever, seriously. Their posturing has no basis or courage behind it.

As I said, when I got home from work last night, I wasn’t tired or fatigued; my hips didn’t even ache. I didn’t do a whole lot of anything around here, either; I caught up on watching the news and did some organizing of computer files, and I did write for a little while. It was, all in all, a very nice and relaxing evening at home. Before I start my work duties this morning, I am going to make a to-do list and put the dishes away and finish the laundry. I am thinking today is going to be my “don’t leave the house at all” day for the weekend–tomorrow I’ll make a short grocery run and get the mail–and hopefully this day, and the weekend, will be productive as well as relaxing. This morning, Sparky let me sleep in a bit before I finally got up, which was very appreciated. I feel good and rested this morning, and it looks to be a lovely day. This weekend we’re going to have extremely cold temperatures over night–potential freeze, too–so it’s a good “stay in my chair under a blanket” weather. I want to finish reading The Hunting Wives this weekend, and get started on my next book. I am going to go back to the pre-Halloween Horror Month methodology for reading something new to me, rereading something else, and reading a juvenile/young adult novel all at the same time. Maybe I can swap one of those out for nonfiction? I don’t know, we’ll have to see how The Hunting Wives goes this weekend. I’d also like to finish another newsletter essay, whether it’s the one about Boots or the one about going to my dad’s high school homecoming game when I was last in Alabama.

And of course, there’s always computer files to clean up and hard copy filing to do, too. And the chores; but I tried to keep up with them as much as I could this past week, so the downstairs isn’t too terrible.

I also can’t keep horror out of my mind, probably because I immersed myself so thoroughly in the genre for all of October. But watching those podcasts on Youtube about Appalachian/Southern lore and legend has been incredibly inspirational for my own horror writing. I’d also like to get some good foundational work done on Chlorine this weekend, too. I’m also still glowing from the election results from Tuesday; it’s nice to experience the audacity of hope again.

And on that note, I am heading into the spice mines. Have a lovely Friday, Constant Reader, and I’ll be back on the morrow!

We really have the most gorgeous sky here.

Lookin’ for Love

…in all the wrong places1…

Thursday and my last day in the office for this week. How exciting! I have no idea what the weekend holds for me; I know I will watch the LSU game for a while, but if it goes the way I’m expecting it to I won’t need to watch after half-time. I’m not sure what other games are this weekend, but I’ll have the television on for sure playing games all day while I do other things, like pick up and clean and read and write and all the other fun things I get to do every weekend. I was a bit tired yesterday when I got off from work yesterday (I started to say night, but is it night at five? The sun was still up…sort of), but came straight home. I did some chores (laundry, the dishes) and picked up some around the kitchen. I also caught up on the news (I am really enjoying the MAGA meltdown2, because I am far pettier than they could ever hope to be), and then did a little writing–not much, just a smidgen. But it still counts!

Paul won’t be home tonight until I’ve probably fallen asleep; he’s going to some gala event fundraiser. I probably should go and be Mrs. Festival, but I’ll be so tired I’d fall asleep in a chair somewhere. I feel like I slept well–my mind is alert and other than some ache in my hips, everything else feels fine, which is definitely odd for a Thursday. I’m alone and without a nurse in the clinic again today, but I also don’t think we’re going to be very busy, either. I feel much better overall since my injection on Monday, which is very cool. Maybe I’ll actually be able to get some writing done tonight, since I have the house to myself. Stranger things have happened. Or I’ll just watch some more videos about Appalachian legend and lore. I am really enjoying these, as well as the “Dixie After Dark” podcast, which is really interesting and fun to listen to…and inspirational.

I finally got my email inbox cleared out yesterday, and I definitely like having an empty inbox. I usually fall behind on it, slowly but surely, and a trip will always make me fall behind. Now that my anxiety is (mostly) under control these days, having a full inbox no longer makes me tense and nervous. Weird, I know, but a leftover from serving on boards and getting buried in blizzards of emails. I had to stay current on my email then in order to not get so far behind I could never catch up…but that is certainly no longer the case, so it’s never that much work to empty it, to be honest, and I love that for me.

This week’s episode of Real Housewives of Salt Lake City wasn’t as good as last week’s–a very high bar to clear–but I was highly entertained for the entire episode and never got bored–you never get bored with this cast. I also have to applaud production, because it’s very clear they know what people are watching for and they camp the show up considerably, making it even more fun than just the usual women-screaming-at-each-other-over-petty -shit. I did laugh multiple times, and it took me out of the our present doom-scape (like the election results did; I think my favorite outcome of all was the ouster of the Moms for Liberty3 skanks from school boards everywhere, including red states, cities, and counties. Fuck off, Libs of Tiktok, now and forever. Odd that your concern for children doesn’t extend to voting for and supporting pedophiles. It’s like you don’t really care about children as anything other than political pawns, which is both reprehensible and evil.

Turns out most Americans think you’re scum, too.

And on that note, I am heading into the spice mines. Have a lovely Thursday, Constant Reader, and I’ll check in with you again tomorrow.

  1. Yes, I remember when Urban Cowboy came out and country went more mainstream. I remember a bar in Emporia even put in a mechanical bull–and no, I never did it myself. ↩︎
  2. Also was able to use the Islamophobic posts to block and delete people from my feed. I stand for no bigotry and never want to see it on my feed. The Debra Messing meltdown was something else entirely, but I was never a fan of hers. Maybe someday I’ll critique Will and Grace. ↩︎
  3. Any group that puts “liberty” in their name actually is fascist and should be side-eyed and blocked from any electoral office. ↩︎

Wagon Wheel

Looks like Wednesday Pay-the-Bills Day has rolled around again, woo-hoo! Apparently another cold front is swooping down on us from the frozen north; temperatures dipping down into the forties (!!!!) this weekend. The meteorologists are also saying we’re done with temperatures in the 80s until spring–but I am not holding my breath on that one. New Orleans weather always has a habit of making forecasters look foolish because, well, it’s New Orleans weather. It snowed earlier this year, for example.1 But I am actually enjoying this respite from the heat and humidity, and I am sleeping like a stone every night since the weather changed, which is delightful. Even the time change wasn’t as disruptive as it usually is–although last night I fell asleep in my chair around eight-ish, which used to be nine-ish. But I don’t mind. I didn’t get much done when I got home from work yesterday, because I was feeling tired, and Sparky was feeling needy. I did run some errands on the way home, getting the mail and picking up prescriptions (two more will be ready for pick-up today, I think), but once I was home, I didn’t really do a lot of anything. I was on edge a bit about yesterday’s elections, but checked the news before going to bed and saw that the Reich Wing was getting trounced everywhere–so much for MAGA’s popularity–and was even more delighted to see this morning that those results held. Three seats in Mississippi’s state house flipped Democratic, too–in Mississippi. MISSISSIPPI. Think about that for a moment…and what it implies about the midterms. I’m feeling hopeful, at least for this morning at any rate.

Darth Cheney died, and there was a massive blue wave. Who could ask for anything more? If voters are this angry with MAGA now, imagine how the midterms could go. What a lovely way for November to start, am I right?

Today is going to be a busy one at work. Our nurse is out, and it’s just me in the clinic today. Undoubtedly I will be exhausted when I get home tonight, but I also decided last night to go back and finish reading The Hunting Wives (which was interrupted by Halloween Horror Month), since I was only a chapter into the Scott Carson. I will be rejiggering my reading schedule and what is up next over the next few days. I do need to get caught up a bit on my Donna Andrews, so I can listen to one of her Christmas mysteries on the way up to Kentucky later this month for Thanksgiving. I am not dreading that drive as much as I usually do, and I suppose this is the first major test of the recovery, isn’t it? Twelve hours in a car? But the key is to take my time and not get stressed about anything, and I may even try going a different way–through Nashville and up the Cumberland Parkway. Anything to avoid Chatta-fucking-nooga. I’ll drive home the old way, most likely, but it’s not a bad thing to shake things up a little bit, is it?

I did watch some more Appalachian lore videos last night, which are always fun and inspiring. I started thinking about the next Scotty last night–trying to land on a title and a time of the year, leaning towards Halloween Party Hijinks–which is also kind of fun. I have no idea what the plot of that would be, but I always have to have the title and the time of the year first. Does it make any sense? Not in the least, but I am extremely different from every other writer out there; not better nor worse, just different when it comes to writing and the writing process. I want to work some more on my novella tonight, too. So far, tomorrow looks like a very easy day in the clinic, despite again not having a nurse and working the schedule entirely on my own, which will wear me out for sure.

Oh, and People named Jonathan Bailey as the first openly gay Sexiest Man Alive. Yesterday was a very good day, wasn’t it? To be fair, he definitely is one of the sexiest men alive, and it’s not something that I ever pay that much attention to–the last one I remember was the joke selection of Blake Shelton (bitch, please) and that was nearly ten years ago–but this is landmark, and also a bitch-slap to the mouth-breathing haters. I’m actually surprised President Stillson hasn’t whined about never being picked for this…

And on that note, I should pay some bills before I head into the office.

Have a lovely mid-week Wednesday, and I will be back tomorrow morning for sure, for sure.

  1. The snow days, and the novelty of snow, was fun…but not something I want to experience all the time. ↩︎

Promises

Tuesday morning, and I hope all is well with you, Constant Reader. I slept deeply and well, didn’t want to get under the weight of the blankets, but did and now I am waking up. I just had a piece of King cake (the on I bought Sunday has mysteriously been almost completely eaten since yesterday morning) with my coffee this morning. It’s forty degrees again this morning, only getting into the mid-fifties later. I did pick up my copy of Bemused (and a few other books, Disclaimer plus two non-fiction tomes, one about Appalachia and another about the Satanic panic and the Go Ask Alice literary fraud), came home, and Paul and I started watching season two of The Rig, which is interesting; I remember nothing much about the first season, but the show has shifted from the smaller story of the workers trapped on an oil rig in the North Sea and weird shit happening to a much bigger story that was kind of jolting. I do like the cast (including Emily Hampshire from Schitt’s Creek), and it’s interesting as it shifts from a horror story into The Abyss. Definitely an interesting choice, and one I did not see coming.

This year has turned into something, hasn’t it? Everyone was so glad to see 2024 usher itself out the door that we weren’t prepared for 2025 to be a disaster from day one. A terrorist attack on New Orleans to ring in the new year, and of course California is still burning. The very notion of putting conditions on federal aid, as well as “blaming” California for its own situation, is so not very Christian (looking at you, Mike Johnson–the fact that you consider yourself a modern Moses instead of a modern Jesus is telling) and an absolute joke when we open the federal wallet for hurricane relief without question every hurricane season (AS WE SHOULD)—when what we should be doing is figuring out way to make hurricane relief faster and more effective and efficient and to do better by victims of natural disasters–which are only going to keep increasing and with greater impact as we navigate the treacherous waters of the new regime. They come so fast and furious now that it’s easy to forget even the more recent ones. California is burning while North Carolina continues to recover from it’s unexpected hurricane disaster–does anyone even think about North Carolina now, in the winter? I do find it interesting that their state government is far more interested in overturning a free and fair election in their state while so many of their citizens don’t have shelter or power (or both). But we move on, like we always do, and assume that the recovery is completed once the story is out of the news. Angelenos are suffering a trauma right now, just as the North Carolinians still are, and the effects of those traumas are very long-lasting. Trust me, I know, and it will be years before either region is recovered, if they ever do.

Well, the New Yorker dropped its horrific article on the sexual abuse (re: rapes) perpetrated by Neil Gaiman on a LOT of women, and yes, I needed a Silkwood shower after reading it. It’s awful, and yes, it is terrible, but it doesn’t surprise me as much as it did the Gaiman fanboys and fangirls. I’ve never truly been that kind of a fan boy for anyone, really; there have been a few whose beliefs and values wound up not aligning with mine, but it wasn’t a trauma for me nor did it trigger an emotional meltdown because I don’t get that vested in artists as a general rule, so when they turn out to be awful in some way my reaction is generally well that’s a shame and I don’t read them anymore. Simple. Getting rid of Orson Scott Card from my shelves wasn’t a big deal, nor was never reading any further of Marion Zimmer Bradley’s1. I had read David Eddings’ The Belgariad2 in the 1980s when I went through my fantasy reading period, but didn’t know about his crimes (with his wife and co-writer) against their adopted children3 or that they did jail time until the piece on Gaiman dropped yesterday and the Internet lit up with angry former fans and friends denouncing his behavior. As for me, well, I’ll always be fond of The Sandman and sorry the Netflix series is ending after a wonderful first season, but I probably won’t be reading anything else of Gaiman’s, or revisiting The Sandman again. But I do think you can separate the art from the artist, to some degree; but that’s up to individuals and their own ick factors, I think. My mentality is I won’t ever get a chance to read everything I want to read, so why revisit the works of problematic, or read new works by them? I had no problem whatsoever cutting Dan Simmons out of my must-read list, and he was one of my favorite horror writers.

The Internet blew up at Carrie Underwood yesterday for agreeing to perform at the coronation of the anti-Christ Monday. Hey, if she wants to lick his boots, go for it, bitch. I’m not the one who’ll have to answer for it to God someday. Have at it, but remember no gay will ever listen to, download or buy anything you ever record from now on. Everything he touches dies, and why do you think you’ll be exempt from that? I imagine you lost any non-MAGA listener you had, but hey–you’ve got that Aryan Master Race thing working for you, so have fun performing for the glory of the Fascists. How did that work out for Leni Reifenstahl?

I was also a little saddened to read about the death of one of my favorite soap stars, Leslie Charleson, recently. She was the second actress to play Dr. Monica Quartermaine on General Hospital, and she lasted decades longer than the original. I always liked Monica, and absolutely loved the way Charleson played her. Sure, I enjoyed the whole Luke-and-Laura stuff, but I primarily watched General Hospital for the Quartermaines, who were conniving and backstabbing and fucking hilarious. (Jane Elliott’s Tracy remains my favorite soap character ever; scenes between the two were great television.) I always thought they should have their own show, and the way they kept killing off Quartermaines willy-nilly over the years was really aggravating; I wanted more Quartermaines, not fewer, and they never deserved to be on the back burner.

And on that note, I am heading into the spice mines. Have a lovely Tuesday, Constant Reader, and I’ll check back in with you again tomorrow.

  1. I was a fan of her gay romance, The Catch Trap, and had always meant to read her Arthurian novels…I can live without reading The Mists of Avalon, after all. ↩︎
  2. I’d actually considered revisiting that series, because of my fond memories of it, but now? Ick ick ick. ↩︎
  3. It’s pretty horrible to adopt children so you have victims at your mercy. ↩︎

No Time

Wednesday hump day and we’ve made it to the midpoint of yet another week, one that is startlingly so much better than the ones preceding it that I actually don’t mind looking at social media. Of course, I’ve purged everyone from the mainstream media outlets I am boycotting now and probably forever, so I am not seeing their bullshit “pick me” scare headlines anymore, and you know, my world is already a much better place without them in it. My social media feeds now are filled with excitement in a way I’ve never really seen before. Does that mean I am in a bubble? Probably, but at the same time my news sources now are more reputable and reliable than the old US Big Four, who seem to be in the tank for authoritarianism and fascism. Who knew the fourth estate was such unethical garbage? The Right, as it turns out, was correct about them all the time, and they are more concerned with appealing to the people who will never buy their paper than serving the audience they’ve built over the decades…after all, now they’re saying we should have had an open convention. The head of the ticket stepped down, so the second person is stepping in–which is how it works and is the most important role of the vice-president–President in waiting, just in case.

And I think a lot of people are starting to wonder about JD Vance being a heartbeat away from the White House, given he is running with the oldest person ever to accept his party’s nomination. (Someone called him a shillbilly yesterday, and I still emit a small snicker every time I think about it.) Republicans have given us a lot of mediocrities as vice-presidential candidates this century, haven’t that? Dick Cheney, Sarah Palin, Paul Ryan, Mike Pence, and now this grifting garbage.

Yesterday was a good day. I had a very productive day at the office before coming home. I lost track of the evening–BBC America news clips on Youtube, so much better than anything native to these shores–and then checked in with a few of my young Gen Z political news junkies, like Luke Beasley and Meidas Touch (and yes, I know they are biased, but it’s nice to hear someone else puncturing their balloons of hollow logic), and before I knew it, it was late and Paul was home and it was almost time to go to bed. So, tonight I will have to be a bit more productive when I get home. I need to get the kitchen back under control before the weekend, and I need to do some errands on the way home tonight, too. Need to delve back into the book. July has also kind of slipped through my fingers, too, and I had wanted to try to write something for the Malice anthology–which I will probably not get back around to before its deadline, which is the 1st of August. I hate when I let that sort of thing happen.

It’s funny, but I’ve never considered my family to be Appalachian; we’re from Alabama. I knew there were mountains in North Alabama. I don’t think I ever made the connection that those mountains were actually the Appalachians (maybe I did and just don’t remember)–and it is considered Appalachia. So, like Vance, I am Appalachia-adjacent. I am a child of Appalachia but never lived in Appalachia, but spent a lot of summers there, like Vance. I would never write a book trashing my family as worthless and lazy (I couldn’t, because they aren’t), and extrapolating that out to everyone in Appalachia (#notallAppalachians). Even though I’ve always considered Alabama the home place for my family (my real “home” was always where my mother lived), where my roots are and where I come from, I am not really of Alabama or Appalachia. It strongly influenced my life because my parents were technically hillbillies (or Mountain Williams, as an old Bugs Bunny cartoon called them), but hillbilly has always been kind of a slur for poor white trash; and one I’ve always kind of proudly claimed, jokingly. But I don’t know as much about either Alabama or Appalachia as I probably should. I’ve been making up for it with Alabama, but I really do need to study my heritage more–and being Appalachian is a much better heritage to claim rather than the Confederacy.

And I do love my lazy approach to research, in which I idly come back to it whenever I remember.

And I am just as Appalachian as JD Vance, and at least I am neither ashamed or embarrassed by the fact or my family.

I’ve also really enjoyed watching Appalachia come together on social media to drag him for the lying filth he is. (The fact that I got all the jokes, too, was definitely an indicator of the heritage, wasn’t it?) Hell, every time I drive up to eastern Kentucky I am going to Appalachia.

And on that note, I am getting cleaned up and heading into the spice mines. Have a lovely Wednesday, Constant Reader, and I’ll probably be back a little later on.

I’ve had cowboys on my mind lately. They definitely can be sexy as fuck, as depicted here.

House of the Rising Sun

This is probably one of the most famous songs about New Orleans of all times, and of course, doing a deep dive into the history of the song–which began as an English folk song, of all things–was a pleasant way to spend a few hours. I heard the recording by the Animals when I was a kid, and honestly never cared very much about it. I always thought it was about a house of prostitution in New Orleans–Storyville, probably–but never gave it much more thought than that. But when I was looking for titles of songs about New Orleans to use for blatant self promotion for Mississippi River Mischief, it was kind of an obvious one. And when it came up on my list for this next post, I realized I didn’t really know very much about the song other than I didn’t care for it very much. It originated in the 16th century as an English folk song, and gradually evolved into an Appalachian folk song called “Rising Sun Blues” (great title, I may abscond with it, frankly) before finally becoming a folk-rock hit for The Animals in 1964 with its current name. (Musicologists suggests it’s thematically related to the old English folk song “The Unfortunate Rake,” per Wikipedia.)

I do find that kind of thing interesting, even if I don’t have any use for that information. (Although Barbara Michaels did a great job of using classic traditional folk songs and their history as the foundation for her underrated but marvelous novel Prince of Darkness–which I would love to revisit.)

If you were playing Family Feud and the question “what is New Orleans known for”, the top two answers would probably be Bourbon Street and Mardi Gras. This annoys the locals and the natives to no end; and it’s understandable. Boiling New Orleans down to those two things is incredibly reductive. But they are major facets of the city, and both are responsible for a lot of tourist revenue, which the parish, city and state desperately need because our state and local governments (all of Louisiana’s cities and parishes) are complete and utter failures. When we moved here in the mid-90s, New Orleans had a strong base of tourism, but it was nothing like now. Since Katrina the city’s primary focus has been building the city into a tourist destination, putting all of the proverbial eggs into that particular basket. The pandemic wound up killing businesses that Katrina couldn’t; the St. Charles Tavern at the corner at Martin Luther King didn’t survive COVID, as one example. (They had amazing fried mushrooms; we used to get them every once in a while as a delicious greasy breaded and deep-fried treat.)

When I first decided to start writing about New Orleans (much as I hate to say this, but New Orleans really IS my muse, and I love that I live in the neighborhood of the Muses here), one of the things I was determined not to do was use clichés about the city in my work. It wasn’t until my fifth novel that I wrote about Carnival/Mardi Gras, which is where most writers about the city inevitably start (cliché as it may be, you also cannot write about New Orleans without eventually having to write about it); I wanted to get more established as a writer before I went there. Part of the reasons the first two Scotty books were set around Southern Decadence and (to a far lesser extent) Halloween was because those were also important holidays for the gays here. I did address Bourbon Street with the first Scotty; I knew that title (Bourbon Street Blues) would tell anyone that it was a New Orleans story, so yes, I took advantage of a cliché there. But I also realize now that most of my New Orleans writings were very provincial in a way; I mostly write about the “sliver along the river”–the Marigny, the Quarter, the CBD, the lower Garden District, the Garden District, the Irish Channel, and Uptown. There’s way more to New Orleans than these neighborhoods–sometimes I send them over the bridge to the West Bank or out to Metairie; there was a very vivid post-Katrina scene where I sent Chanse out to Lakeview, but for the most part I’ve not done much about other neighborhoods here. The West Bank, City Park, the East, Gentilly; all of these rich and vibrant neighborhoods–as well as the diverse ethnic make-up of the city–are very fertile ground for someone writing about New Orleans. Generally, the neighborhoods I write about are the neighborhoods writers who don’t live here focus on because they are the better known ones.

And of course, I’ve rarely, if ever, touched the history of the city–and it is rich, compelling, and fascinating…and super dark.

That’s kind of why I wanted to move this recent Scotty out of the city and into one of the rural parishes not far from the city limits. I have fictionalized these parishes before–I try not to fictionalize New Orleans, but have no problem inventing parishes and towns in the rest of Louisiana. St. Jeanne d’Arc parish is loosely based on St. John the Baptist and St. Charles parishes, known as “river parishes” because they run along the river north of the city. Redemption, also an invention I’ve used in other books, is based on the “bayou parishes”–not along the river, but between the river and the wetlands/Gulf of Mexico; those are Terrebonne and Lafourche parishes. Louisiana is just as interesting as New Orleans, and also has an amazing and interesting history of its own. Of course, the next Scotty will be back in the city–his next few, if they go as planned, will all be within the city–but that doesn’t mean I don’t want to keep writing about Louisiana and my fictional parishes, either.

There really is so much material here I could never run out of ideas.

A Little Respect

Well, hello, Wednesday morning, how are you doing? I am at home today because I am doing the prep work necessary for tomorrow morning’s procedure (it’s a colonoscopy; I am not sure why I am being so coy about it. I am over sixty now and this is long overdue; the hurdles I had to clear and hoops I had to jump through to get this thing scheduled….oy. I don’t understand the mentality of the people who defend our health care/insurance system…and sadly, it’s better now than it was when I first got health insurance back in 2006), and the doctor recommended being in close reach of a bathroom for most of the day. I have to get up at midnight to begin Stage II, then I have to get up and be at Touro for the procedure by seven tomorrow morning. I also have to go to Touro later today to get a rapid COVID test to get clearance.

Seriously, with my luck I’ll test positive and then not only have to reschedule the entire thing but have to quarantine for fourteen more days.

That sure took a turn, didn’t it?That should give an indication of my late October mood, though, shouldn’t it? I don’t know, maybe it’s the procedure and having to go underneath anesthetic for the first time in a really long time; or perhaps it’s the whole Halloween thing? Who knows? Halloween is certainly a time for darkness and the macabre; which is interesting, since the name is a contraction of all hallows eve, which means, really, the eve of All Saints Day, which you’d think would be more celebratory? It also occurs to me that I’ve never actually written about Halloween, and given what a popular holiday it is in New Orleans, that’s kind of odd. Jackson Square Jazz is set just before Halloween; I think in the afterward Scotty mentions the costumes he and the boys were to the Halloween Ball? It’s been a hot minute, so I can’t remember…but I know there’s not a Scotty Halloween book, and I know I never did one with Chanse–who couldn’t be bothered to wear a costume; he’d find the whole thing tiresome. But not even a short story! (“The Snow Globe,” in fairness, began as a Halloween story and was originally titled “All Hallows Eve”; obviously I changed that.)

Unfortunately, given the timeline I’ve got going with the Scotty books now, I don’t know that the next one can be a Halloween book. Although I could play with the timeline a little more, I suppose. Royal Street Reveillon was set during the Christmas season, and I’ve always thought of it as Christmas 2019 (which means it became cemented into my brain as set in that year; and my stubborn subconscious never lets it go until my conscious mind realizes how stupid I am actually being)….with a pandemic just around the corner. But the book itself came out in October 2019, so I finished writing it earlier that year so there’s no reason it can’t be 2018…or 2017 for that matter, and I can also go back and put books in between the ones I’ve already published, if I so desire…ah, the Godlike power of being an author! What, though, would be a good Scotty Halloween title? Hmmmm…Halloween Season Hijinks? Halloween Party Horror?

Sigh. This will be in the back of my head now for awhile, which is how this always goes, doesn’t it?

I did sleep very well last night, which was lovely. (I set the alarm of course, reflexively, as I slipped into bed last night) We finished the first season of Only Murders in the Building, which resolved the first season but ended with a cliffhanger setting up Season 2–something I was wondering about–and thoroughly enjoyed it. We also started watching Dopesick, a fictionalized version of how the Sackler family single-handedly created the opioid crisis in this country so they can make billions. It’s very well done–I’d watched the documentary version of this already, whose name I cannot recall–and the acting is stellar. It’s powerful, too; I love that they are showing how this all happened through the eyes of a doctor in Appalachia (played by Michael Keaton), as well as showing the lives of some of his patients and how they got sucked into oxycontin addiction. I don’t know how anyone can watch this (or the original documentary) without burning with rage at the Sackler family and the politicians they fucking bought off so they could exploit the pain of the working class for profit, and what a classic example this is of how an unmonitored and unregulated capitalism–the ideal of the conservatives (let the market decide!)–can not only be damaging but lethal. We are still cleaning up the mess this created, while they sip expensive wine and eat caviar and fly to glamorous places on private jets. (I think the next time someone pulls some of that Ayn Rand libertarian “no regulation” bullshit on me I’m just going to smile and say “Oxycontin and the Sackler family disprove her theories on everything.”)

I also got Dr. Alecia P. Long’s latest book yesterday, Cruising for Conspirators: How a New Orleans DA Prosecuted the Kennedy Assassination as a Sex Crime, which I am really looking forward to reading. This is, of course, about the Clay Shaw trials here in New Orleans, and how Jim Garrison abused his power as district attorney; Oliver Stone based JFK on this, treating Garrison as an unsung American hero when he was anything but that–I’ve not seen the film, nor any other Oliver Stone film since this piece of propaganda and packet of lies was filmed. I also don’t trust anything Stone did, or does, anymore to be honest and truthful and factual. He basically ignored all the evidence–and there was plenty of it–and turned Garrison into some kind of folk-hero when he truly was a corrupt monster who tainted everything he touched and made the Puritans look like sex maniacs. And this country being what it is, the completely fictional film JFK and its conclusions and accusations are now seen by people as being factual. I’ve always been interested in writing about this case fictionally–seriously, the history of New Orleans and Louisiana is so rich and deep and rife with potential for writing, I could never run out of material here–and have done some loose reading up on it…and I’ve never come across anything backing up Garrison or his claims that didn’t originate in some insane right-wing crackpot conspiracy generator. I could be wrong, but I feel Dr. Long–whose The Great Southern Babylon is also a must-read for people interested in New Orleans and her history–is not a Garrison sympathizer; certainly the book’s title implies that; but I also trust Dr. Long, her scholarship, and her dedication to research. This will inevitably prove to be the definitive book on the subject.

I’m also still reading Robert A. Caro’s massive The Power Broker: Bob Moses and the Fall of New York, which, like all of Caro’s work, is exceptional. I’m perhaps about a quarter of the way through the book, but it’s also fascinating; a history of the New York parks and recreational facilities and the building of highways and parkways and roads so that New Yorkers could escape the city and enjoy the outside recreationally on the weekends. The power struggle over making Long Island more accessible to the city dwellers is deeply fascinating, as is watching how another idealistic young man slowly realizes that politics is more about reality and power than ideals, and learns to use politics and power to get what he wants–even if doing so might not be exactly legal. (This was my primary takeaway from Huey Long by Harry Williams.) I hope to read more of Paul Tremblay’s Disappearance at Devil’s Rock with an eye to finishing it, over the course of the next few days and the weekend. Tremblay is becoming one of my favorite horror writers; I’ve certainly loved everything he’s written thus far, and would like to get some more horror read this month before Halloween and we move into the Thanksgiving/Christmas/New Year’s holiday cycle.

And on that note, I am heading into the spice mines. Have a lovely Wednesday, everyone, and I will check in with you again tomorrow after the procedure. (Depending on how it goes and how drugged I am and how quickly the drugs wear off.)