Tag: Apple Plus

wolf in the breast

Tuesday morning in the Lost Apartment and I feel daunted. I know we have a busy schedule at the office today and I am mentally preparing myself for all those interactions. I love my job (I don’t love getting up at six, never will), and I love that I am helping people (not quite the urgency of the olden days, but still–new HIV infections need treatment and care else it can still prove fatal), but lots of clients have a tendency to wear me out some and thus I am exhausted when I come home at the end of the day. I have to run errands after work today–mail, mostly–and hopefully won’t be so drained by the time I get home that I’ll be able to carve out some revising time. I managed to get through another chapter last night, and I do believe the book is starting to take its final, publishable form, and I should be able to get it in on time.

Last night after writing Paul and I started watching a new bilingual show on Apple Plus called Now and Then. It’s set in Miami, so some of the characters speak Spanish, some speak English, and some speak both. Twenty years ago after a college graduation, six friends partied on a beach; one of them died, and as they were rushing him to the hospital (driving under the influence) there was an accident. The other driver was killed, and to protect themselves they moved the by-now dead friend into the driver’s seat and fled the scene. Twenty years later (there’s a dual time line, which can be a bit confusing at first) the now adult kids are being blackmailed, and of course the same cops are investigating the new murder of one of them…it’s interesting, if a bit confusing, and it took me a while to get used to the characters (as well as figuring out who they all were in each timeline) but it was intriguing and we will most likely continue watching. I am really looking forward to their new Tom Holland show, The Crowded Room, which also looks interesting. Apple is doing interesting things with their television service.

I have some other Pride entries that I’ve started and haven’t quite finished yet. I am hesitant to post them because–well, I don’t really know why. Writing about homophobic treatment within the publishing community, and my experiences with it, shouldn’t make me feel reticent and squirmy. It gets tiring calling this shit out, then having to defend yourself against straight people who question whether or not this stuff happened. It’s a form of gaslighting the mainstream has perfected when it comes to the non-majority; is it homophobia, or is he just an asshole? Why should i feel uncomfortable talking about how I’ve been treated by certain members of the community, when I didn’t do anything wrong? It’s why women who are sexually harassed and/or assaulted at conventions don’t say anything–because for some reason people always want to protect an institution instead of the individual. You become the problem, instead of the person who actually did something wrong in the first place. The casual homophobia at events at Bouchercon etc. always leave you wondering, should I have laughed that off? Should I have said something? There are some straight male writers who’ve made it abundantly clear to me they want nothing to do with me–and can’t even be bothered to be professionally polite. There’s one in particular who’s been especially rude to me at several events. He’s friends with friends of mine, so he will inevitably drift over and join us–pointedly ignoring me. He actually refused to be introduced to me at Sleuthfest one year.

And of course, when I mention this to my straight writer friends, they are very quick to “oh, you must have misunderstood he’s such a great guy” and I always have to bite my tongue to not say, “Great to straight people, sure.” I was a little taken aback when he refused to be introduced to me at Sleuthfest, but I have started being amused by the fact that my existence clearly shakes him to the very core of his being, to the point that now he turns his back to me if we’re in the same area. How can I not be amused by that level of childishness I’ve not experienced since grammar school and the playground? Sure, dude, you’re really punishing me by not meeting me and engaging with me. It keeps me up at night (sarcasm). Sorry about your penis being so small, homophobe.

And of course, there are the lovely ones who think making a joke about diversity concerns along the lines of “I let a guy suck my dick once for drugs, does that count?” Ha ha ha ha, such wit, I can see why you became a writer with that kind of sharp thinking and clever turns of phrase coming so naturally to you that it just rolls off your tongue.

I also wish I had a dollar for every time a straight person has explained to me how someone else saying something horribly homophobic is actually okay because he/she is “nice” and I must have misunderstood. Um, after sixty-one years of dealing with it, I’m pretty fucking sure I know homophobia when I see and hear it, but please, O Wise and Wonderful Straight Person, please explain what is and isn’t homophobic to the gay man from your vast wealth of experience of dealing with it every day, I would never tell a woman something isn’t sexist, nor a person of color what is and isn’t racism.

Sigh. And on that note, back to the spice mines with me.

Sorry

And we have cycled around once again to work-at-home Friday. Huzzah? Huzzah.

I will be taking a short break from my work-at-home duties today to interview Margot Douaihy today for S&S’ Pride Month extravaganza. Ah, the terror of not sounding stupid when interviewing someone really smart and talented. Heavy heaving sigh. I will of course post a link to it when it goes live, so you can hear how smart she is and how much I fumble in interviews. Her Scorched Grace is probably the best debut novel you’re going to read this year, and I highly recommend it. It’s not too late to get a copy, either. (You can order it https://bookshop.org/p/books/scorched-grace-a-sister-holiday-mystery-margot-douaihy/18283014?ean=9781638930242–I don’t understand why this stupid site won’t let me do short hyperlinks like it used to, but it’s fucking annoying. Anyway, buy the book. It’s terrific.)

And it’s a three day weekend! Huzzah! I am looking forward to getting some rest, getting a lot of editing and revising done, and hopefully some cleaning and reading.

I was terribly tired yesterday, the way I inevitably am on Thursdays, and really didn’t want to run errands when I got off work, but I put on my big boy pants and did it anyway. I decided my brain was too mushy to work on the book–I went ahead and read the next few chapters I’ll be editing after work today, so I did do something, at any rate–while relaxing with a purring cat in my lap after I did some chores. I had to unload the dishwasher and reload it, plus fold the clothes in the dryer before moving the load in the washer (I started this on Wednesday night but completely forgot once I was in the clutches of Vanderpump Rules), and tried to do some things to straighten up the kitchen before the energy flagged and I was forced back to the easy chair by mental and physical fatigue. There are, after all, worse things. But I can get a lot of revising done this weekend, which is terrific. It would be great if I can get the whole thing finished by next weekend, wouldn’t that be marvelous? I slept deeply and well last night, too–and managed to sleep in all the way until seven thirty, which is when I usually get to the office. I was exhausted last night when I crawled up the stairs to bed, but as Paul noted, “it’s not that you’re old, you just get up really early every morning now” which is true. Funny how I managed to go almost my entire life without having a 9 to 5 job for very long, and now my body clock is adjusting to it at this late stage of my life. My body is now used to it; I just have to retrain my brain to stop thinking in terms of losing time by going to bed earlier since I get up earlier and thus have more time during the day.

We started watching Platonic these last few nights, a new Apple Plus show starring Rose Byrne and Seth Rogan. I do like Seth Rogan and think he’s funny, and of course love Rose Byrne since her days on Damages, which I feel doesn’t get nearly enough credit for how fucking good of a show it was, and its amazing cast, led by GLENN CLOSE, who was phenomenal as Patty Hewes, super attorney and all around horrible person. Platonic is quite funny, and the chemistry between the two as platonic former best friends who come together again after Rogan’s character gets divorced (the Byrne character didn’t like the woman he married) like no time has passed. Luke McFarlane is beautiful as always as her gorgeous husband, essentially the Ricky to her Lucy. I do recommend it, it’s clever and funny and well written, and, like all Apple shows, very high production values.

I also managed to proof my short story “Solace in a Dying Hour,” forthcoming in an Australian anthology titled This Fresh Hell yesterday, as well as reviewed a book contract for signing–and emailed the corrections necessary to the contract in order for me to sign it. I also spent some time doing research for this afternoon’s interview; I’ll spend some time reviewing the research and coming up with great questions for her, or at least ones that won’t embarrass me by being too stupid and the kind of thing she’s been asked a million times. We also started watching the Hillsong documentary, which is interesting because I really don’t know much of anything about that church; but it’s a megachurch which probably means the heresy of the prosperity gospel, and yes, it’s a heresy. Jesus was not about “believe in Me and you’ll get earthly treasures”; the promise was supposed to be about a wonderful afterlife. (It always has amused and saddened me that so many people miss that Christianity isn’t about life but death and the afterlife; the point is to be the best possible person in your human life to earn a good afterlife, so yes, the prosperity gospel is heresy–“it is easier for a camel to pass through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to get into heaven”–does that ring any bells? At some point I am going to have to talk about religion and how it’s been perverted from a guide to life to so many things that it isn’t supposed to be…)

I also rewatched the first part of the Vanderpump Rules reunion in its longer, no commercials version on Peacock, and that version is by far the best of the two. It flows better, is edited better, and the extra seventeen minutes of public shaming for the Toms (Sandoval and Schwartz) was worth every second. I really need to spend some time on that blog entry about reality television I started after the wrap of the last season of Real Housewives of Beverly Hills; because those two shows are entwined; Rules was initially a spin-off of Beverly Hills, with Lisa Vanderpump going back and forth between the two shows (until she quit Housewives). So much has already been written about the Scandoval that what new or interesting thing can I find to say about it, or the layers to levels of cheating and adultery being laid out on the show by its cast? I am sure none of the players involved in this had the slightest idea how explosively this would go viral, turning the three players (Sandoval, his mistress, his enabling best friend) into pariahs. Not even Camille Grammer in her legendarily villainous first season on Beverly Hills got this kind of publicity or exposure–she did get the cover of People magazine–and of course, the legal troubles of Erica Girardi/Beverly Hills cast drama got some coverage in major papers because of the massive frauds perpetrated by her husband (and get the fuck out of here with the “she didn’t know” bullshit), but still–nothing in reality television prepared anyone, let alone Bravo, with how this affair within the cast would explode and become a worldwide fascination…while Andy Cohen and the network count their cash as the money keeps rolling in. The reunion episode got over two million viewers, which is huge for a reality show. The question is, do I finish my entry about reality shows and their appeal before the reunion episodes finish airing, or can I go ahead and do it now?

Always the question, really.

And on that note, I am going to make another cup of coffee and head into the spice mines. Have a lovely morning, Constant Reader, and I’ll be back with you again tomorrow.

Music

Tuesday morning and it looks like we managed to survive Monday somehow. It was ninety-seven degrees yesterday when I left the office–but the humidity hasn’t started getting super bad yet. After getting the mail and making groceries, I was exhausted by the time i finished unloading the car and putting everything away. And it’s only May. It’s funny how we forget the brutality of summer when it’s not summer her, every single year. It’s always a shock how hot it gets here when the summer heat returns in late spring…and how much it saps the energy right out of you. I did manage to get some work done last night after putting everything away, and then I repaired to the easy chair after a ZOOM meeting to be a kitty bed.

We started watching Shrinking last night on Apple TV, and it is really one of the funniest shows I’ve seen. I believe it’s written by Brett Goldstein, aka Roy Kent on Ted Lasso, and stars Jason Segal and Harrison Ford. Once it hits its stride–the pilot episode was a bit uneven–it becomes absolutely hilarious. I can’t believe more people aren’t talking about this (maybe they are, I am notoriously oblivious, after all) but it’s terrific. Funny–and the humor comes from the characters and who they are, rather than situations, which makes it richer and more human, I think. Jason Segal plays a therapist whose wife passed away about a year before the show opens, and he’s questioning everything about his life, including how he practices therapy with his patients, and decides to be more active, proactive even, in his treatment of them. Sometimes this works, sometimes it doesn’t, but it is always quite clever and funny and enjoyable. He also has an estranged relationship with his daughter–his grief was selfish, and he wasn’t there for her when she lost her mom–and their neighbor, Liz, has kind of taken over taking care of Alice the daughter, so he’s trying to rebuild that relationship as well, while navigating his gratitude to Liz for stepping up–complicated by the fact she won’t let go or step back. Like Ted Lasso, it’s about relationships and learning how to navigate grief–in Ted Lasso, it’s the grief of the failed marriage, in Shrinking, it’s grief over a dead spouse…but the primary takeaway from the show so far is something I’ve noticed, and a friend who lost her spouse about six months ago and I have been talking about, is the lack of conversation and discussion about grief, how to grieve, how long one should grieve, the guilt you feel whenever you have a good moment or something nice happens to you (“I shouldn’t be having a good time!”), and so on.

We have a billion dollar industry built around grief–the mortuary business–and yet that’s all about the public display of grief, rather than the intimate experience of it. Ah, capitalism. I’m actually surprised no one has figured out a way to monetize grief, really. Or maybe that’s what the mortuary business is? If so, at least in my case, it’s gone horribly wrong. The service in Alabama at the funeral home was absolutely lovely, don’t get me wrong–but it didn’t provide me with any closure or answers or much of anything other than the ability to share sadness with the rest of the family (and I do pity the relatives who didn’t come or even call or anything; that is something Dad will never forgive. I am a little more understanding, but totally get where he’s coming from and can appreciate and understand it. He worshipped her and he saw that as a slap in her face, right or wrong.), so I don’t know.

I don’t know much about anything, really. Almost every day is a reminder of how little I know and how little I understand. But life really is a learning process; I hope to never stop learning and evolving and growing until the day my heart finally gives out as well.

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

Beautiful Stranger

Wednesday and it’s Pay-the-Bills Day again; how does time pass so goddamned quickly?

We were in a flash flood advisory yesterday evening when I left the office, and on my way home I could see that at some point yesterday some of the streets I traverse every day had flooded at some point in the afternoon. I did get a little work done on the book yesterday, but was ultimately forced to surrender to fatigue and repaired to the chair. I was also still feeling some of the after-effects of the Anthony nominations being released on Monday–was still getting congratulatory posts and emails and messages, which I had to acknowledge; everyone is so kind and lovely. So many people are delighted and happy for me, which always comes as a surprise. I guess you never really outgrow the PTSD from being a queer kid?

But I also got to see this week’s Ted Lasso last night (they drop on Wednesdays, but we always can get it at 8 pm central on Tuesdays on Apple Plus) and it was maybe one of my top five episodes of the entire series. Yes, I’m partisan, and yes, I am prone to love anything well-done with gay themes and yes, I am also very highly critical of gay themes in film and television. Stop reading now if you want to avoid Ted Lasso spoilers. When it was revealed earlier in this final season that Colin was actually a deeply closeted gay player I got a bit excited. I’d wondered if the show would address homophobia in sports, and what’s it feels like to be a closeted gay professional athlete, and it was handled so beautifully. The scene with Trent Crimm and Colin talking about it in front of the Homomonument in Amsterdam was just brilliant, and then last week Colin’s friend Isaac grabbed his phone from him to delete nude photos (long story, but YOU SHOULD BE WATCHING) and of course saw his text conversation with his boyfriend. Isaac just gave him a disgusted look and walked away…and my heart broke a little bit for Colin. I know that feeling all too well–the friend who becomes a former friend once they find out or you come out to them (and yes, coming out is a process that goes on for your entire fucking life)–but it’s Ted Lasso–I knew this wouldn’t turn out badly, and it really didn’t. Yes, I am biased, but this episode is one of my favorites of the entire run of the series; everything was clicking and humming along the way it usually does–this season has felt a little uneven–and everyone was pitch perfect, from Roy to Ted to Keely to Rebecca to Higgins to even Nate, whose redemption arc I am enjoying. Yes, I was disappointed when he turned in Season 2, but I am delighted to see that he’s still the same Nate, still figuring things out but at heart a really good guy. And Roy’s growth and development–courtesy of a swift hard kick in the pants from Rebecca–is epic. The end game of the show is now in sight, and I think we’re all going to be delighted with the direction in which it’s going to go. I hope there’s a bit with Trent Crimm doing a book launch for his book on the season and Richmond and Ted’s philosophy of coaching. I cried a few times during last night’s episode, won’t lie–and I absolutely cannot wait to watch it again when I get home this evening. I have to run some errands on the way home–post office and prescriptions–but I am hoping I’ll get home and be able to have a lovely evening of writing before I wind up turning into a cat bed.

I don’t feel tired today although I had a relatively restless night of sleep–sorta sleep as I call it, where your mind feels sharp the next day but physically you’re tired. I need to start stretching (and yes, I know I’ve been saying this for months) but it does help keep you nimble and loose; the aches and tiredness comes from tight muscles, and the best thing to do with tight muscles is stretch them. Maybe I should put that on the to-do list? I didn’t want to get up this morning–the bed was incredibly comfortable and I felt really relaxed–but I can look forward to not getting up to an alarm on Friday morning.

And on that note, I am heading back into the spice mines. Thanks again, everyone, for all your kindnesses about the Anthony nominations; I still can’t believe it myself, you know? Three? Madness. Have a great Wednesday, Constant Reader, and I’ll check in with you again tomorrow.

Star

Well, I survived my first ever colonoscopy, with an endoscopy thrown in for good measure (my gastroenterologist was concerned about the heartburn medication I take daily, so he wanted to take a look around in there). It was a thing, really. The colonoscopy was originally supposed to be in 2018, but there was a problem with my insurance (insurance companies are really of Satan) so it was rescheduled for last April…and then pandemic. Men really should get their first at fifty; so of course I got mine at sixty.

But ugh, what an unpleasant experience prepping for the procedure was. I didn’t sleep at all Wednesday night because I was getting up all the time to run to the bathroom; the final dose of the purge medication was supposed to be taken at 1 a.m. (!!!!), along with another 42 ounces of water–following the first dose and 42 ounces of water five hours earlier. Oh, and you’re supposed to drink all the water over an hour. So I went to bed finally at two in the morning, and then UP DOWN UP DOWN UP DOWN all night, plus the stress of worrying about sleeping through the alarm because I was up so late…yeah, it was pretty ugly around the Lost Apartment yesterday morning before we summoned the Lyft to whisk us off to Touro Infirmary. They had also originally told me I needed to stop in and get a COVID test the day before “around four”; you can imagine my horror to get the confirmation call Wednesday afternoon at two-forty-five, which was when I was informed that they cut off testing if you aren’t there by two-thirty.

Womp womp.

So then I had the added stress of oh my God what if I am doing all this prep and my test comes back positive? (It didn’t.) But they couldn’t do anything with me as far as anything actually medical is concerned, until the results came back (negative, around nine thirty). I got wheeled in and anesthetized around eleven thirty, and we were home before one. Exhausted, hungry, and still wonky from the anesthetic, I decided to take their advice and just relax and chill at home and not worry about anything pending; my body, after all, had two invasive procedures (and any procedure is traumatic to the body), so I figured–and still think–that I was allowed to have the day free from any worries or constraints about anything else. I was very tired–no coffee, no sleep, anesthetic–to the point that my joints ached from exhaustion, which also was rather unpleasant. I was too tired to do much of anything, really, and actually dozed off in my chair for a while (I did, however, stream the first half hour of Dune; and it looks incredible.) I did go to bed early and I think I slept deeply all night; at some point will have to download the Fitbit data to get an idea of just how much sleep I did or didn’t get over the last few days.

I wound up working from home needlessly on Wednesday (I read the prep instructions wrong; I thought I was supposed to start at eight a.m.–but it was actually eight pm); but I was very low energy all day anyway so it was probably best that I not see clients when I am in a low-energy place; undoubtedly it was stress about the procedure sapping my energy. I made condom packs and did some data entry and other work-at-home things while bingeing the non-Jamie Lee Curtis Halloween movies. As I have said before, I came to the Halloween (and most other non-Freddy Krueger slasher fare) late in life; in fact, it was Paul who got me to start watching. Anyway, I had realized that I’d never seen any of the other ones from the original series that don’t have Jamie Lee Curtis in them….so for my Halloween Horror Film Festival what could be more apt than finally watching the rest of those movies?

Maybe apt, but seriously–if Jamie Lee Curtis isn’t in it, why bother making it? I mean, seriously. Halloween III: Season of the Witch was just terrible. I’d heard at the time it was released that it wasn’t good, but I thought I had seen that people had revisited it and it was becoming a cult classic, under-appreciated at the time and now coming into its own? It had lesser production quality than any old made-for-television movie from the late 1960’s/early 1970’s. The plot made no sense whatsoever; the acting, editing and production quality was horrific–I kept watching all the way to the bitter end, waiting for something, anything, that would make me think I was correct in seeing that it had been rediscovered as better than originally thought? Stonehenge, some weird plan to turn children and people into androids…fucking weird. I did research it, though, and apparently John Carpenter wanted to do the films as an anthology series built around Halloween; kind of like American Horror Story, only with films. The film tanked, so they brought back Michael Myers with Halloween 4: The Return of Michael Myers, which had Sasha Jenson, my crush fromDazed and Confused, as a supporting character. I went on to watch Halloween 5: The Revenge of Michael Myers–but again, no Jamie Lee Curtis. Instead, these two movies focused on Laurie Strode’s DAUGHTER (!!!!) who was a child; Laurie and her husband died in a car accident or something, and so the little girl was staying with a foster family, and Michael came for her.

As far as slasher movies go, these last two weren’t bad; they just didn’t feel like Halloween movies. It was also unsettling because he was psycho-stalking a child, and that just didn’t feel right or fun to watch. I mean, it’s one thing when the victims are relatively attracted and slightly talented twenty-somethings pretending (badly) to be teenagers…but a little girl? Too may squick factors there for me to enjoy the movies as much. But…now I can say I’ve seen practically all of them, so that’s something, I guess?

And now it’s Friday morning, and I need to, once again, reconnect to my life and everything that’s going on and everything I need to get done. The Lost Apartment is again a disaster area, I haven’t been to the gym all week, and…ugh. All I really want to do is go back to bed and sleep for the rest of the weekend, frankly. But I am way behind (my constant refrain) and need to get caught up. The Saints are on Monday night football (note to self: alternate route home from work Monday night) so I have all day Sunday to get stuff done, and of course the LSU-Mississippi game isn’t until two-thirty on CBS Saturday, so I have most of Saturday morning as well to get things done. I think we’re going to watch Dune tonight; I just wanted to get a feel for the movie last night, which is why I started watching and it looks amazing in scope and style and visuals.

I first read Dune when I was in high school, and loved it. At that point there were only three books–the original trilogy; the other two being Dune Messiah (which I didn’t like near as much) and Children of Dune (which I did enjoy very much) and was very excited when Mr. Herbert continued the series; I think I only read the next three (God Emperor of Dune, Heretics of Dune, Chapterhouse: Dune) and loved them all. (I stopped reading the books when Mr. Herbert died and his son took over; no offense to his son, but…it just didn’t feel right to me. And while I appreciate series being continued by new authors after the original passes, I’m not interested in reading them because the original mind behind them isn’t controlling the direction anymore, if that makes sense? This is entirely different to me than authors who become brands and new authors come in as “co-writers”; I don’t expect those books to be the same as those by the original, brand name author–like James Patterson and Robert Ludlum) Dune was my first forage into science fiction, actually; I’d never read any before, and that’s another reason why I am so partial to the book/series: it was my gateway drug. The next summer Star Wars came out, and by the end of the decade I was reading Azimov* and other science fiction writers, like Heinlein and Bradbury and an entire new world had opened for me in fiction. (I feel like this might be the proper place to mention how much I admire science fiction/fantasy authors; the world building alone requires so much work and so much attention to detail that I cannot wrap my mind around it, let alone attempt doing it.)

And on that note, I am heading into the spice mines. Have a lovely Friday, Constant Reader, and deepest apologies for not checking in with you yesterday.

*I have also started watching Foundation on Apple Plus; but more on that in a later post.

What Have You Done For Me Lately

So, yesterday I finished the first draft of the novella!

It was around 1200 words when I started working on it again about a week or so ago; for some reason Venice was haunting my imagination, and so were my two poor gays in the majorly dysfunctional relationship gone there for a holiday. To be honest, I’ve been having so much trouble finishing anything since I turned in the last book manuscript (which needs more work) that I was beginning to think I wasn’t going to be able to get anything finished ever again, ever. I couldn’t even finish short stories (in fairness, I’ve always found the shorter form to be harder than the longer, which I also am very aware makes little to no sense except in my warped brain); despite having made some amazing starts and having some amazing ideas. And yet, when I started working on this novella again, BAM! Words started pouring out of me, and even though I had no plan for the story (I knew the end, that was it) it just kept going, new scenes and twists and turns coming to me as I wrote. It’s sloppy, I know, and there needs to be more of a pay-off for a subplot (which I allowed to peter out like a wet firecracker), but I am also certain I can easily repair it with a vigorous edit…after letting it sit for a while and rise like yeast.

But yeah–I wrote close to 20,000 words in just over a week; usually getting anywhere fro three to four thousand done in a sitting–and those sittings were generally around two hours, give or take.

Not fucking bad at all.

I also got the web copy done before I started work on the novella, too, and then with everything done I wanted to get done, I left for the gym. I had a lovely workout–and while I was there, it rained pretty hard for a bit, but was it was all over by the time I finished. I walked home a different way than I usually do, wanting to document my neighborhood some more on Instagram, and thinking, I should take a picture of the Norwegian Seaman’s Church on Prytania, since it was a pivotal part of the part of one of the Scotty books. But as I aimed my camera (well, the phone) at it, I realized all the signs marking it as the Norwegian Seaman’s Church were gone, and it looked…well, renovated. This bothered me a little–the Norwegian Seaman’s Church had been there for 112 years! But while it sort of IS a gentrification issue, it’s not one as bad as I might have feared; turns out in 2018 the Norwegian government stopped funding this churches around the world, and without a funding source, they had to close the church and sell the property. The new owners are turning it into an accessible wellness center–I didn’t know there was a pool!–and I am curious to see how that’s going to work out. I wouldn’t mind doing some yoga–my flexibility as I am now aged has become a concern, and as we all know, flexibility is one of the three measures of fitness (and the one everyone ignores).

So many changes to the city, seriously. It’s part of the reason I’ve felt so disconnected from the city for so long–between my job and everything else going on–not the least of which is my office moving from Frenchmen Street to Elysian Fields and Claiborne–I don’t really feel like I know the city as well as I used to. I think–once the weather gets back to something resembling bearable again–I am going to have to take a few trips down to the Quarter to explore and see how things look now. What if the Nelly Deli is gone? YIKES! How can I write another Scotty novel without knowing what’s going on in the Quarter?

I can’t, that’s how!

And I really cannot imagine moving Scotty and the boys out of the Quarter. But…everything changes, doesn’t it?

I slept fairly well last night, inevitably having to get up groggily a few times because I always drink a lot of water on gym days. I am a bit groggy this morning–which the cappuccinos are helping with–and am actually looking forward to seeing what I can get done today. We started watching Lisey’s Story on Apple Plus last night., and are pretty absorbed into it. I don’t really remember much of the book, to be honest–I enjoyed reading it, as I always do with Stephen King novels (the only ones I didn’t like were The Tommyknockers and Dreamcatcher)–but I don’t remember much other than her dead husband was a writer, there’s a psychotic fan, and a different world her husband was somehow able to slip away into from time to time–and he’s left clues behind for her to somehow slip into that world looking for something. I don’t remember her having sisters in the book–although Jennifer Jason Leigh and Joan Allen are killing it in the adaptation–and I am actually kind of glad I don’t remember the book well, to be honest; it makes enjoying the series that much easier. I do remember, reading the book, that King does a great job when he centers women in his books–Delores Claiborne was also exceptional–and it’s a great part for Julianne Moore, who is one of our finest actresses.

It’s also very cool that television productions of high quality are there so terrific actresses can continue to do great work once they’ve reached that age where film roles become sparse because they’re considered too old; sexism is still rampant in the film world, despite #metoo and #timesup, alas; while sexual harassment and the casting couch were addressed (though probably still a reality) the sexism and ageism (which only applies to women) has not…

And now to make a to-do list for the week. I am hoping to get caught up on my emails and maybe finish “The Sound of Snow Falling” this week; perhaps do some edits on another story, and revise the first chapter of Chlorine. Again, very ambitious plans, but definitely do-able….as long as I continue to get sleep every night and nothing untoward drops into my lap. Have a great Monday, Constant Reader!

Who Do You Think You Are

Sunday morning is here, and along with it sunshine and no doubt smothering humidity–later today I will be heading to the gym for the beginning of this week’s workout schedule and also trying to get some other things done today. I have to finish the web copy I promised to do today, and I am itching to get back to my writing. Yesterday was a very good day on every level–I was highly functioning for a change, and it felt wonderful, more like the kinds of days I am used to having, or rather, got used to back when I was regularly highly functioning. I did sleep very deeply last night–I did have some very strange dreams, though; all I remember is they involved Taylor Swift and losing teeth–but I woke up very well rested this morning and ready to go. I am awake and not sleepy-tired, my muscles don’t ache or feel tired, and we watched some amazing television last night.

And I actually started writing another Scotty book yesterday–nothing like creative ADHD, right?

But the opening scene for this book has been in my head for quite some time now. One day recently as I was toying with an idea for the next Scotty book, this line popped into my head: “I’m really worried about Taylor” (those who have read Royal Street Reveillon will understand) and then another sentence came to me recently: It was the Monday after Mother’s Day and the termites were swarming. I’d initially thought the swarming termites line was the opening for a short story, and yet…couldn’t figure out a story for it to go along with. The other day it hit me: the two sentences go together, and are the perfect opening for the next Scotty. Yesterday when I sat down to write, these two sentences were swirling together in my head and I thought, why not go ahead and put it down on paper, so it’s there when I’m ready to go back to work on another Scotty? I don’t even know what I am going to call this one yet. I had already–because of these openings, and knowing they wouldn’t work for the next Scotty I had planned to write–so I decided to push Twelfth Knight Knavery back in the Scotty schedule to be the one after this one. I am going to leave it as “untitled Scotty book” for now. I have two stories I want to weave together into this one, and another subplot, but I’ve not taken the time to actually map any of that out or anything as yet. But hey, I wrote nearly twelve hundred words before turning my attention back to “Festival of the Redeemer,” and I am going to take that as a win.

And “Festival of the Redeemer” is now sitting at over seventeen thousand words. Not too bad, really; I’d estimate that I wrote well over four thousand words between the Scotty (around 1200) and the novella yesterday. The story also took an incredibly dark turn, too–I’d always intended it to, of course, but still–the turn was so much darker than I’d planned it even kind of caught me a bit off-guard. I do like it, though–it is a first draft, and as such is very sloppy and slipshod and is going to need some serious revisions and edits, but I am pleased with it. This twisted tale seems so perfect for Venice–and it may turn out, after revisions and edits, to be much longer than the original planned twenty thousand; but word counts are inevitably goals, anyway, and more a measure of progress than anything else.

Have I ever mentioned how much I actually love writing? It makes me so happy to be writing, and it’s so satisfying; there’s really nothing like it, and I can’t even remember the last time that I derived so much pleasure from actually doing it; I don’t remember going into the zone the way I have been lately–I feel like it’s been years since I went into the zone where the words just flowed out of me and I lost track of time and word counts and so forth; which is probably why I’ve been having so many concerns about burn out and losing my ability to write–always a fear for me, always–and yet here it is back again, and I feel centered again. I feel like the last malaise last forever–at least for years–and now I am past it, and even if what i am writing is not anything I should be writing… but if I am going to publish a collection of novellas I have to actually write them, don’t I? And this one is really going somewhere–even if that place is somewhere incredibly dark…and you know what? HUZZAH FOR SOMEWHERE INCREDIBLY DARK.

But when I get this done–I think I may even get this first draft finished today or tomorrow-I am going to get that short story draft finished next and then I am going to get back to Chlorine. I need to get that first chapter revised and rewritten; a good task for this week, I think, and then I am going to work on that other proposal I want to get turned in to see if anything comes of it. Hey–you never know, right? You never know until you put it out there.

I also managed to clean the kitchen yesterday and worked on the filing, The area around my desk is a lot more neat and tidy than it has been, and my inbox is almost completely emptied out. This feels like a major accomplishment, and it’s nice to look over there and see just a few loose papers in there–which I may even get rid of today.

It’s amazing what I can do when I’ve slept, seriously.

We finished watching Elite last night, and it was terrific–perhaps not as good as the earlier seasons, which is a very high bar to reach; but with a cast reshuffle and an effective reboot of storylines, not surprising. We had three seasons to get to know the original cast, and with half of them gone (oh, how I miss Lucrezia!) and their replacements coming in, the story had to go into a bit of overdrive to get them involved with the original cast, and there were times it felt a bit forced and like it went too far too fast. The ending of the season was satisfying, and the next season–with two more characters being added–is now really well set up.

We then moved on to Apple Plus, with Rose Byrne’s new starring vehicle Physical, and I really enjoyed it–the three episodes that had dropped already, at any rate. Byrne plays a dissatisfied housewife whose own gifts and talents are being subsumed by that horrific housewife trope of the time–and even her supposedly “progressive” husband subscribes to that old patriarchical notion of what women’s value was in the progressive movement–they were there to fuck, feed, and clean up after the men; the men did all the thinking and the women did all the work. Then she discovers an aerobics class at a mall…and finds it incredibly empowering; rediscovering herself and who she is through the class. She’s not completely likable–she has a horrible inner monologue voice that is snarky and bitchy and judgmental (if funny at time)–but she’s understandable, and Byrne brings her charisma and likability along with everything she does. It will be interesting to see how the show develops.

After that, we switched over to Amazon Prime to watch the first episode of their mini-series adaptation of Colson Whitehead’s The Underground Railroad, a book that I loved and thought was absolutely brilliant. Here is slavery in all of its degradation, abuse, and horror–the Georgia plantation depicted here isn’t the prettified Tara of Gone with the Wind, and these slave owners and overseers aren’t the genial paternalistic Gerald O’Hara the Lost Cause movement insisted were the reality. It was incredibly difficult to watch, but necessary; my own discomfort in watching, I kept reminding myself, was nothing compared to what the enslaved people endured, and my white fragility needed to look the reality directly in the face and deal with it. These are my ancestors; and even if the family legends my grandmother told me when I was a child was mythology and lies, they certainly believed enough in this horrible system to fight and die for it.

And if I learned anything from Hurricane Katrina, it’s that no matter how terrible something looks and appears on television, the reality and its scope is a thousand times worse. The show is beautifully shot–the cinematography is stunning; and the beauty of the production, and the care taken, only adds to the horror of what the viewer is witnessing.

I kept thinking, the entire time I watching, heritage not hate, huh? Fuck all the way off.

And now I am heading back into the spice mines. Have a lovely Sunday, everyone.

Way of Life

Sunday morning, and yesterday was a bust. Oh, we took Scooter to the vet, but I was oddly tired (Always Tired: The Greg Herren Story) and only intended to read for a little while; but alas, every time I got up to try to do something, anything…I was tired and gave up. So, I stuck to my easy chair and read Summer of ’42, and even dozed off for a little while around five. I was finally able to get up the energy to put the dishes away and clean out the dishes in the sink before making dinner–which is also when I did the filing and tried to get a handle on the reorganizing. I am hoping that tonight I’ll sleep well, which will help me get through the gym tomorrow as well as getting a leg up on the things I need to get done in the meanwhile before I go visit my family later this month.

But blessed sleep did occur last night and so I am hopeful that today I can make serious progress on all the things I wanted to get done this weekend. I started writing a short story yesterday, “Vivit Dominus,” and I’d like to make some progress on that today. I am going to go to the gym later on, and of course, would like to spend some time getting a handle on some of the other messes that seem to have become permanent around here. I also need to make a decision on what to read next…so many excellent choices in that TBR pile that sometimes it’s hard to decide.

We watched Palmer last night on Apple Plus, starring Justin Timberlake (#freeBritney), and it was incredibly well done. Timberlake gives a stunning performance as a former small town Louisiana football hero who wound up spending twelve years in jail for attempted murder, and comes home to live with his grandmother. Her home is next door to a trailer…and a young woman lives there (played brilliantly by Ted Lasso’s Juno Temple) who has a little boy who isn’t like other little boys. He has no interest in boy things, and his favorite TV show is Princess Penelope, a cartoon about princesses who have wings and can fly and have adventures. Grandma Vivian takes care of Sam when his mom is off on a drug binge, disappearing for weeks at a time. Grandma Vivian dies in her sleep during one of these times while she’s taking care of Sam, and the responsibility for taking care of Sam falls on Palmer–who doesn’t know what to do with this gender nonconforming little boy. At first he tries to get Sam to be more like other boys, but Sam is persistent–he likes what he likes and doesn’t understand why there’s a difference between boy things and girl things–and it’s really beautiful and touching to watch Palmer slowly come around to not only accepting him as he is, but becoming a parent. It’s a really lovely little film, and one of the few good things that came out of the pandemic is that streaming services are picking up lovely movies like this and making them available to a much larger audience than they would have reached in a theatrical release. Every film we’ve watched on Apple Plus has been quite marvelous. They have a documentary called Boys’ State that I’d like to watch–particularly since I myself went to Boys’ State when I was in high school.

And Ted Lasso is coming back in July! Huzzah!

So, today I am going to make a to-do list and see what progress I can make on it today. I am going to walk to the gym in a few hours and get my workout done–it inevitably wears me out and makes me tired, but I have to somehow stay awake so I can get sleep tonight so I can function tomorrow. However, a quick check of the gym’s hours today shows that they are no longer only open from 10-3 on Sundays but rather 9-6, so I can actually go later than I’d originally planned, which is even better. Huzzah! That changes everything.

So, I am going to get up for a bit and do some touching up around here, and then I am going to work for a while, maybe do some writing. Have a lovely Mother’s Day, Constant Reader!

Evil Dust

The sun is actually out today and there aren’t many–if any–clouds in our beautiful blue sky this morning, which is lovely. It’s rained pretty constantly ever since Tuesday afternoon, and everything outside is still wet from nearly a week of rain. I love rain–especially thunderstorms–but even I thought five straight days of them was a bit extreme. I wound up running my errands in the rain yesterday–I dropped off another five boxes of books to the Ladder Library sale yesterday (you actually can tell now that I’ve gotten rid of books)–and made groceries and got the mail. It was pouring while I did all of this, so my plans to go to the gym yesterday were finally scrapped. I also wound up taking the day off from almost everything yesterday–I think I needed a brain-free day, frankly–and so we watched a lot of television–we binged all the way through a delightful comedy called The Other Two, watched the Tom Holland movie Cherry on Apple Plus, and then switched over to Acorn for a riveting crime show called The Cry.

Yes, I was a slug all day and I am not a bit ashamed of it.

Oh, sure, I had my journal with me and scribbled notes freeform all day–my favorite is that I came up with a short story title I now HAVE to use, “To Live and Die in La.”, while having absolutely no idea what the story would actually be, but I laughed at the title and now want to. use it–so I did do something. But today I have to start revising/copy editing/making notes on Bury Me in Shadows–due to be returned to my editor no later than the first of May–and so, if I do go to the gym today (leaning towards it, since it’s sunny out) I can curl up in my easy chair to do it, so that’s a start. I really need to work on my story–the deadline for that submission call is May 15, I believe–and so I need to kick everything up a notch this week. I am getting caught up on a lot of other things as well–it’s never-ending, and have also accepted that I only have so much bandwidth for things. The emails, for example…I’ll never get caught up on those, ever…so I need to prioritize and so forth in order to get through everything that absolutely needs to be responded to immediately.

I also need to spend some time getting organized and cleaning a bit this morning. There’s filing to be done, of course–always–and somehow the kitchen looks like a tornado ripped through here (not completely an exaggeration, to be honest) and I need to get that taken care of this morning. I have a load of laundry to do, and there’s always dishes–always. I also want to organize the refrigerator a bit more this morning. Since the sun is out, I’ll probably grill hamburgers later on this afternoon, which is always an absolute treat (I really prefer all meat to be cooked over hot charcoal, frankly–or at least, most). I am also a bit excited that the next step of book decluttering (and yes, I am aware I am completely Marie Kondo-ing my apartment) is to go up into the storage attic and start clearing the boxes up there. This will, of course, be more complicated than the bookcases and the hidden boxes in the living room, since I’ll have to bring them down and go through them, combining the ones to keep (I can’t imagine there will be many of those) while putting aside the ones to donate. The goal is to clear out enough space in the storage attic so I can clean out my storage rental and close that account; most of the books in the storage are copies of my own books (and my kids’ series collection) along with some other things–mostly papers–and it would be nice to either no longer have that bill every month, or to use that space for other things…but at the moment I can’t think of anything that we’d need to keep it for.

But it would be great to lose that bill by the end of the summer.

Not as great as paying off the car, but still pretty good.

I think I’m going to add Semi-Tough to the donate pile. The first three pages are nothing but racial slurs as well as justifications for using them, and how the main character–it’s a first person narrative–isn’t really racist and the slurs are just words that don’t mean offense and so on–and yeah, I really don’t feel like spending any of my time with that kind of character. I certainly wouldn’t in real life–imagine being at dinner or a cocktail party and the person you are talking to says, and this is a direct quote from page one: Just because I may happen to say (the n-word) doesn’t mean I’m a racist.

Um, actually it does. It says a lot about you, who you are, and how you were raised, as well as how you see people and the world.

And I really have no desire to read a book filled with racial slurs…because you KNOW its also full of gay slurs, too–and most likely without the caveat justifying the racial slurs: Now listen, just because I say “faggot” doesn’t mean I’m homophobic.

Sure, Jan.

There are so many other good books to read, why reread something I originally read as a teen that plays on racism and homophobia and misogyny for humor? I stopped rereading The Last Picture Show, a book I absolutely loved, a few years ago when it got to the part about bestiality, and how it was perfectly normal for the teen boys to fuck animals…I closed the book and put it away. I may go back and reread the entire thing at some point–the reason I was rereading it in the first place was to examine how it handles homosexuality–which I distinctly remembered it doing–but I don’t think I was able to get far enough into it to get to that part. I know that Coach Popper–long-suffering Ruth’s awful husband–was a deeply repressed one, who favored one of the more athletic boys primarily because of his attraction to him; that the preacher’s son Billy Bob Blanton was often mocked and teased and bullied and humiliated for being a “four-eyed queer” (before he molests a little girl, after which he’s taken away as a pervert); and that the heterosexual English teacher, who was cultured and sensitive and kind, was accused by the coach of impure thoughts and fired (everyone, of course, would never suspect the manly football coach of anything, or question him); and I remembered a particular poignant scene between the fired English teacher–who’s been fired, whose wife has left him and taken their daughters and filed for divorce–and Ruth, where he’s just so beaten down and defeated that it’s heartbreaking. But yeah–that whole “boys will be boys” attitude towards bestiality was too much for me to get through again.

The Last Two is a terrific show, and quite funny. Paul and I really enjoyed it; the premise of the show is the two older children are in their late twenties–one is a struggling actor whose most recent audition was for a commercial in which he would play “Party-goer who smells a fart”; the daughter had wanted to become a dancer until she broke her ankle and dropped out of dance school and cannot figure out what she wants to do with the rest of her life–when suddenly, their thirteen year old brother puts up a video of him singing a ridiculous song (“Marry Me at Recess”) and becomes an overnight viral sensation with a record deal and a manager under the name “Chase Dreams”; which makes them feel even more like losers. The older brother, Cary, is also gay and in a weird relationship with his straight roommate; the daughter has broken up with her boyfriend and is now homeless at the beginning of the show. I thought it was terrific, frankly, and look forward to season two.

My primary takeaway from Cherry is that Tom Holland is an amazingly talented actor–he really gives a stunning performance as a poor young man who falls in love, gets his heart broken and joins the military, serves as a medic in Iraq and comes home to nothing but PTSD and drug addiction, which leads him to a life of crime. It’s a very dark story–but also weirdly a love story at the same time–and I don’t think the film, worked overall; the Russo Brothers, who directed, turned it into this big grand opera style thing in the way they shot it; to the point where the beautiful imagery is almost intrusive. It’s a very real story–based on a true story–and it highlights, very powerfully, how we abandon our troops completely after their service is over (since they’re no longer the troops….”support the troops” makes me angry because it is used primarily as a political prop and the actual soldiers themselves suffer in silence and neglect while we give billionaires and corporations every break in the world), but it’s worth watching for Tom Holland’s performance–he was also fantastic in The Devil All The Time–and it’s really nice to see him pushing himself in his non-superhero roles (he’s also the best, in my opinion, Spider-Man).

And on that note, I am heading back into the spice mines. Have a lovely Sunday, Constant Reader!

Hypnosis

Tuesday after the Edgar nominations were released–which is always one of my favorite days of the year. I love seeing how excited everyone–especially those who make the short-lists–always is. It’s also three weeks until Mardi Gras; which is going to be weird and kind of sad. It’s a bit of a shame, since last year’s was so cursed with bad energy almost from the very beginning. I’m glad I don’t have to plan my life around the parade schedule this year–that is quite nice–but it’s still kind of sad.

Insomnia returned last night, and this morning I am already feeling tired and worn out. The cappuccino is waking me up, but I feel very tired and drained and my eyes are all messed up; burning and watering from lack of sleep. It is most unpleasant, actually, particularly since I was planning on going to the gym after work tonight. I have a sneaking suspicion that may not happen; we’ll have to see how I feel when I get off work today and get home. Although I will say the shower really helped, and I think the caffeine is starting to take effect in my system as well. I have about a gazillion emails to answer today–yikes–and I really need to start working on the book at some point now that time is running out on the deadline.

Nothing like a deadline to kick your ass into gear.

We finished watching Flack last night and it is truly amazing. Anna Paquin is riveting as a spin doctor, who has an almost frightening ability to rationalize anything and excuse everything and come up with some absolutely insane ideas to protect her clients’ careers and reputations–with little to no care about how it impacts other people or the others in her clients’ lives. The primary problem is she has adapted what works for her in her day job into her private life–spinning merrily away and damaging her romantic relationship as well as those with the people she is close to–and most especially, her sister. It’s an exceptional performance–everyone in the cast is excellent, and all the roles are well written. But it’s Sophie Okenodo as the woman who runs the firm that steals the show–her ruthlessly ambitious executive has the best lines, and Okenodo plays it to the hilt. There’s a scene between her and a lowly intern in the season finale that alone should get Okenodo an Emmy; but since it’s on Prime who knows? Tonight we are starting the second season of Servant, M. Night Shyamalan’s fever dream of a nightmare series for Apple Plus; Lauren Ambrose is amazing–again, the entire cast is great–and it’s very cleverly written and creepy as all get out. I hope the second season is as good as the first.

I also am looking forward to reading more of Alyssa Cole’s When No One is Watching–which is an Edgar finalist for Best Paperback Original. I can certainly see why; the first few chapters I’ve read already are extremely well-written with a strong voice for the main character. There are a lot of terrific books on the Edgar shortlists; more books I may never get around to reading, alas.

Ah, I see what kind of day this is going to be–ebb and flow with energy. I just had a bit of a low, but now I am wired again. So bizarre, really. But I am just going to have to power through the low energy cognitive function and see what I can do about getting everything caught up. It would be amazing to get caught up on a day when I am not functioning at anything remotely close to 100%, wouldn’t it? But I keep looking at my emails and not having the energy or courage to even open one to read, let alone answer. But they won’t go away and the longer I go without answering some of these the worse off I will be in the long run, and let’s not forget–more will just keep coming in, like Sisyphus pushing the boulder.

Heavy heaving sigh.

I did notice yesterday that my body is changing–the regular working out is reshaping my body again, and while I doubt I am ever going to fit into size 29 pants again (I doubt i will ever go lower than 31, and even that would be miracle) it is nice to see that the workouts I am doing are having an effect–even if I think most of the time that my workouts are pretty wimpy; I have a really good base of muscle underneath the layers of fat, and even the little bit of exercise I am doing is having an effect. My posture is improving and my chest/shoulders/upper back are looking nice and bigger, which is having the desired effect of making my waist look smaller. I was in the bathroom yesterday washing my hands and happened to glance up into the mirror and was like, hey, when did that change occur? It was a most pleasant surprise, and I was quite delighted to see it. Probably at the end of February I am going to change from a full-body workout to a targeted body part program; it will mean the return of the much-loathed Leg Day, but that’s the most effective kind of program…I am hoping my body can handle it by the beginning of March.

And on that note, tis back to the spice mines with me. Have a lovely Tuesday, Constant Reader, and I will check in with you again tomorrow morning.