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.
And somehow, almost twenty-one years have passed since Scotty Bradley burst forth into the world with Bourbon Street Blues, one of what I hoped was the most unconventional and original amateur sleuths in the history of crime fiction. This is neither the time nor the place to again tell the story of how I created him, or how what was supposed to be a one-off stand alone book became a series spread out over twenty years (!!!); I’ve told those stories endlessly over the last twenty years both here and on panels. But Scotty remains very precious to me all these years later, and I still care about getting him and his life right on the page. I don’t torture him or make his life as miserable as I do Chanse’s (poor, poor Chanse), but he has his own problems and issues that he has to face–but his endless optimism and willingness to face things head on and deal with them, rolling with the punches and always getting back up, has never once wavered in all the years I’ve been writing him. I love him, his family–even the stuffy Bradley side; I love that the unconventional family their son married into pushes every single one of their buttons–and I love his New Orleans.
The other night I was scrolling through Youtube and, just for the hell of it, searched for a song that I’ve been trying to find a digital copy of for my Spotify or Apple Music accounts; Erin Hamilton (Carol Burnett’s daughter) remade Cheap Trick’s “The Flame” as a dance song (she also did the same with that old 1970s classic, “Dream Weaver” and I prefer her versions to the originals), and I love the extended remix. I found the video on Youtube and as I listened to it, it brought back a lot of memories of going out to the gay bars, hitting the dance floor and staying out there all night, getting caught up in the music and just having a great time. I think this song predated the turn of the century, so it’s a late 90’s recording…anyway, it really made me think, put me back into a Scotty place in my mind, and as I listened, sang along, and bopped my head, the next Scotty book started forming in my head….and I realized that’s been part of the disconnection I felt writing the last few Scotty books; sure, I could and can still write him, and sure, I could get back into his head space, but it was much harder for me to do than it used to be. I thought it might be because I don’t go to the Quarter at all anymore, or that I don’t spend any time in gay bars anymore; that I don’t know what it’s like to be a gay man in his forties (almost fifties) today–my own memories are of a completely different world than the one we live in now. But now I know what I was doing wrong–I was listening to the wrong kind of music while writing him. If I want to ease back into Scotty’s mind and world, I need to listen to dance music I used to hear in the gay bars.
And can I say that it’s a real shame that it’s so hard to track down old gay bar dance remixes?
Knowing this means I’ll probably keep going with Scotty for a while longer, at any rate. I love him, I love the character, and I know I’ve been avoiding dealing with some things in that series that will eventually have to be addressed…but it’s absolutely lovely to know that I can slip back easily into his mind-space just by listening to great old gay dance remixes.
“I think we should turn it into a home gym,” I said into the gloom. “I mean, wouldn’t it be great to just have to go downstairs to work out? And we can put in a sauna and a steam room. What do you think, guys?”
It was the Monday night after Mother’s Day, and the termites were swarming.
That was why we were sitting around the living room in the dark. The only illumination in the entire building came from two blasphemy candles, flickering in the center of the coffee table. Modeled after Catholic prayer candles, one had a picture of Drew Brees in his Saints jersey with a halo and heavenly light shining on his head with the words Pray to Breesus around the base. The other was St. Chris Owens of Bourbon Street.
So, yeah—blasphemy candles. They’re very popular here.
Yet even the scant pale light from the teardrop shaped flames was enough to draw an occasional scout termite from the gloom. We wouldn’t see it until it landed on the glass lip of one of the candles, before dive-bombing into the flame. There would be a brief sizzling sound, and then the yellow flame flickered and turning briefly reddish as the termite immolated. Once it was consumed, the flame would be steady and yellow again.
The swarming rarely lasted more than an hour, but that hour seemed to last an eternity.
Termites have always been the bane of New Orleans’s existence. The domestic kind were bad enough. Houses and buildings were tented to get rid of infestations, the bright yellow and red stripes announcing to the world that a termite Armageddon was happening inside. The city’s original termite problem had grown exponentially worse since the particularly vicious Formosan variety had hitched a ride on a freighter to the fertile feeding grounds of our old, mostly wooden city shortly after World War II. The dampness of our climate must have made them feel like they’d arrived at termite Disney World. The little fuckers love wet wood, so the entire city was an all-you-can-eat buffet. They’d killed live oaks that had survived hurricanes, destroyed historic homes, and I’d heard that they could even chew through brick and mortar.
Maybe that was an urban legend, but it wasn’t one I was interested in proving.
Formosan termites swarmed.
The first rule of surviving Formosan termite season was speed. Every source of light had to be turned off the moment you spotted the first scout. They’re drawn to the light, like moths, but unlike moths, they’re drawn to the light in the hundreds of thousands, turning your home into a scene from Cecil B. DeMille’s ultimate cheesefest The Ten Commandments. The big streetlamps along Decatur Street outside drew the swarms, horrifying clouds of little monsters flying around, frantically trying to mate while shedding wings like revoltingly nasty snowflakes.
It is incredibly hard for me to believe that I have written seventeen or so books and countless short stories set in New Orleans and never have once addressed the swarms of Formosan termites we live through every spring. They return after Mother’s Day and haunt us in the evenings, usually between eight and nine pm, until Memorial Day, give or take. They aren’t a nightly occurrence, thank the heavens, but they are usually at their worst on Mondays and Tuesdays. No one had warned Paul and I about them, so the first time we were swarmed we didn’t know what to do. Remembering that horror from the old apartment on Camp Street (we had a massive security light attached to the house right outside our living room, so any light at all inside would draw clouds and clouds of them inside), how was it possible I had never written about the Formosan termite swarms? And with Scotty having bought the building on Decatur Street from Millie and Velma–who I sent into retirement along the Gulf Coast of Florida–and learning about the responsibilities and drawbacks to being a New Orleans home-owner, as well as trying to figure out how to redesign the interior for more functionality as a single-family dwelling? Of course, the question of what to do with the empty retail space on the first floor would be an issue; I wouldn’t want a living space right on the sidewalk of Decatur Street at any time of day or night or month or year. I also wouldn’t want to deal with renters, either, and thus neither would Scotty. But the space can’t just be left vacant, either. So, I thought it would be a great way to open the book with them sitting out the swarms in the dark, with a couple of candles lit, talking about the renovation plans?
After I finished writing Royal Street Reveillon, I was pretty damned pleased with myself. I thought it was perhaps the best Scotty book of the entire series, and reflected my growth as a writer along with Scotty’s growth and development as a character. When I finished it, I had the thought I always have whenever I finish writing a series book: maybe that should be the last one. But I immediately dismissed that thought from my head; I had left something in the personal story of Scotty and the boys hanging with a bit of a cliffhanger, so I knew there had to be one more book at least to tie off that loose end. I was also thinking about a local-ish political scandal of the last decade–the usual, a conservative Christian pro-family politician outed for having an inappropriate relationship with a teenager (who was over seventeen, the age of consent for boys in Louisiana), and a political powerhouse dynasty that had ruled a near-ish parish for generations was dead in the water. I had been thinking a lot also about taking Scotty and the boys outside of New Orleans and the safety of Orleans Parish for an adventure; as my knowledge of Louisiana grew exponentially along with my study of the state’s history, I really wanted to set a book in a part of Louisiana I could fictionalize and have some fun with. I had already created a couple of fictional parishes and towns in previous work; The Orion Mask particularly was set in fictional Redemption Parish–but Redemption wouldn’t work for this one, so I needed another one.
While I was thinking this through, I remembered that two Nancy Drew mysteries were connected to New Orleans–she was only here for a couple of chapters of The Ghost of Blackwood Hall, but most of The Haunted Showboat was set here, or just outside of the metropolitan area (a quick reread showed that “Carolyn Keene’s” Louisiana and New Orleans bore no resemblance whatsoever to the reality…but I knew I had a Nancy Drew Easter egg in Bury Me in Shadows (Blackwood Hall), and I wanted to put one in a Scotty book–so why not a showboat? The ruling dynasty of the invented parish–St. Jeanne d’Arc, for the record–was given the same name as the relatives of Bess and George’s that they and Nancy were visiting in The Haunted Showboat, Haver. I even named the house in Mississippi River Mischief the same name as the Havers’ home in The Haunted Showboat, Sunnymeade.
And yes, the Havers’ showboat/gambling casino was also named the River Princess.
I originally planned on the case coming to Scotty through his sort-of-nephew, Frank’s blood nephew Taylor; someone he met in group therapy (which he is doing to help get through what happened to him in the previous book), or possibly even a boyfriend, someone he’s seeing. I could never get it to work right…and finally, I realized it couldn’t come from Taylor. Taylor is going to continue growing as a person and as a character, but this was too soon after his own trauma for him to be trying to help other people. And then I remembered David, Scotty’s best friend, the music teacher. David’s not been in a book since Mardi Gras Mambo, but I’ve never forgotten about him. And it made sense–David has moved on from his old school and now teaches at NOCCA (our local Fame high school), and the kid is one of his students–and David finds out by confiscating the kid’s phone in class. I wanted to create a character based on this absolute sweetheart of a young man I met; I don’t remember how we met, but friends of a mutual friend were in New Orleans, and wanted me to meet them for drinks…and they had a daughter who went to school here. The kid was a friend of hers, absolutely adorable and sweet, and a ballet major at Tulane. After the daughter and her friend left, the parents immediately turned to me and asked me, “is he gay? <The daughter> think so, and so do we.” What I should have said was, “Well, he’ll let people know if and when he’s ready”; what I actually said was “absolutely.” (I did later find out the kid did eventually come out; wherever he is, I hope he is happy and living his best life. He was so sweet and charming and likable…) When I started writing the character, I made him unlikable, arrogant and sure of himself and his own beauty, and the effect it had on other people. That was wrong, and I went back and made him more of a naïve kid, with a strong sense of right and wrong; and the story worked a lot better. It wasn’t like Scotty to be so judgmental about this kid; if anything, especially after what happened to Taylor, he’s be super-protective.
And this tale–the corrupt old politician and the beautiful teenager working at the food court at Lakeside Mall–gave me a chance to dig into something from Scotty’s past that’s never been truly explored: that his first lover was his high school wrestling coach when he was about fifteen/sixteen. This came up in Jackson Square Jazz–which of course has been unavailable for thirteen years–and I always meant to circle back around to it, just never did…but over the years there have been throwaway lines in books about how Scotty has always preferred older men (Frank is fifteen years older; we’re not really sure how old Colin is), and so to bring it up again in this instance? Yes, perfect.
I loved my story about the corrupt politician, the wrecked showboat in St. Jeanne d’Arc Parish, and the teenager, but something was missing.
I realized two things: something very important was missing, and the crimes of the Haver family were just too big and too many to fit into this book, so I chose to focus on only one…and then the Murdaugh case broke. The Murdaughs were a real life Haver family, and their crimes were almost exactly the same! So, I ripped one of their crimes from the headlines and made that the primary focus of the story, and it was the right choice: the book started falling into place and the story began flowing. I was very nervous about the book–slicing out all the other crimes while building up only one was tricky, since they were all woven through the entire manuscript and the new one had to be as well. I also wasn’t sure if the subject matter was handled appropriately; the old/young daddy/boy thing is the gay community is often mistaken for something much worse than it is, and talking about gay teenagers’ sexuality is also kind of a third rail. But I trust my editor, and she loved it.
I guess. It doesn’t feel like I accomplished much this weekend, but that’s nothing new. I always feel like I should have done more when the weekend–especially a long one–has ended; but I am trying not to beat myself up as much over stuff like this as I used to. It’s not good for my mental health, for one–always a shaky thing at the best of times–and it’s counter-productive. I feel very strongly that one should never regret things–no regrets is kind of a mantra of mine–because regret is really a waste of time and energy. You can’t change it, after all. (I am not saying this rule should apply to everything–murder, for example–but for anything that isn’t a crime, you should have no regrets. All you can do is change the behavior and not repeat it if you feel regret but wallowing in the regret is counter-productive and kind of self-defeating. I think you get the point. I’ve not had enough coffee to be certain I am making the point properly.) I didn’t finish reading my book, I didn’t write nearly as much as I could have, and I certainly didn’t get the apartment as clean and organized as I would have preferred. But it’s also a short work week, we have a regular weekend coming up and then another three day holiday after that; and then I am off to Florida for Sleuthfest–which makes that an even shorter week than usual. And since yesterday was a holiday, I actually get to use my Friday as my work-at-home day of the week. Huzzah! That will be nice, and I have all kinds of things I can take home and do this Friday.
We finished watching The Defeated last night and it’s really quite good. It was originally released in 2020 and approved for a second season, but the pandemic interfered and it looks like they went into production sometime last year, but where is the second (and final) season? It’s really good–if you enjoy Babylon Berlin or have any interest in the second world war and it’s aftermath, you’ll really like this show.
Well, yesterday I ran my errands–Metairie and the North Shore–and after I was finished and heading back home, I realized something: you can actually tell where an area falls on the political landscape based on the length of the drive-thru line at a Chik-Fil-A. The one in Metairie on Veteran’s Boulevard yesterday, for example–was so long it backed out onto Veterans and was blocking a lane of traffic. No offense to right-wingers, but there’s really no fast food in the world good enough for me to sit in a drive-thru line that would take that long (although now it occurs to me that it could also be an indication of how slow the line moves, which again–no fast food is so fucking good that it’s worth waiting in line for a minimum of twenty minutes for).
It was exhausting, of course–the heat index was well over a hundred yesterday–but it was also a beautiful day for a drive across the lake. I used to loathe driving over the causeway bridge, and it’s still not a favorite thing for me to do (the five dollar toll to come back to the south shore doesn’t help; yes, it’s free to go to the north shore but you have to pay to come to the south; just like when the Crescent City Connection was a toll bridge going to the West Bank was free but you had to pay to come back to New Orleans), but I’ve adapted and can now relax (depending on the idiot drivers, of course; there are always a few) as I drive across and enjoy looking at the beautiful expanse of water. The bridge is twenty-four miles long, so you can reach a point where you can’t see land in any direction, like you’re out there in the middle of the water with no end to it in sight–I think that was what always used to bother me about driving across the bridge. The north shore is also actually quite beautiful, too–you really feel like you’re in the South on the North Shore, more so than on the south shore, where it feels like Louisiana, if that makes sense? (although it would make for an interesting thing to write about in a Scotty book, hmmm) I do wish I had more free time, because I would like to go exploring around the city a bit more–the north shore, the river and bayou parishes–but the cost of gas is also making such explorations prohibitive. Maybe over the 4th of July weekend I can head down to the river parishes….I kind of need to for this new Scotty book. Then again, I am inventing a parish out of my imagination, but it also doesn’t hurt to ground a fictional parish in reality, either.
And on that note, I need to head into the spice mines. Happy Tuesday and will chat at you again tomorrow, Constant Reader.
Today I am heading out to Kenner to do my sex writing workshop at the North Kenner Library; I had thought it was the East Jefferson Parish library, but was incorrect. We’ll see how it goes.
Yesterday was kind of a shit day. I had to take the day off so I could take Paul out to Metairie for an appointment, and the weather–slightly overcast and sprinkling–had turned super-ugly by the time we left. It wasn’t raining terribly hard here, but by the time we got on the highway it was a downpour, flash flood warnings were in place, and water spouts were being spotted on the lake. I got soaked running back to the car from the building where his appointment was, and we decided to go into a sporting goods store that was just across the parking lot, with the hopes of spending enough time shopping so that when we were finished the storm would have mostly passed. That strategy did pay off, but we then stopped at Costco, and after unloading the car, I went and made groceries. By the time I’d unloaded the car and put said groceries away, I was exhausted and happily retired to my easy chair for the evening. We did watch some more episodes of the Queer as Folk reboot, about which I am having mixed feelings. (I did spot my supervisor as an extra being totally extra in a couple of scenes, which was very fun.) I also made dinner last night–I wasn’t really sure what to make, so finally settled on something easy from Costco that just had to be heated in the oven. I didn’t write at all yesterday, and I was too brain-fatigued to read anymore of Tara Laskowski’s The Mother Next Door–but I did read some of it while I was waiting for Paul to be finished with his appointment. It’s quite good, and after I get home this morning I intend to do some more reading…tomorrow I will write.
I did sleep really well, though.
Sigh.
I guess when I get home today I will work on chores, as they are always waiting for me. I need to figure out something–I’m not entirely sure what, though–to do about files and so forth; I don’t really have as much room as I need for the files that are working or those that need to be put away. (My filing cabinet is an utter disaster that needs desperately to be worked on, but it’s also full to overflowing. I don’t have space for a taller file cabinet, which could be the solution to the problem, but who knows? I have a file box under my desk and off to one side that is supposedly “working projects”…but it’s not easy to access and I forget often that it’s even there. Maybe tomorrow I will walk over to Office Depot in the miserable heat and humidity to find something to use for files that I can make room for somewhere to look at…)
So, in some ways, today is kind of a day off where I don’t plan on writing anything or running any kind of errand or so forth; rather, today is a “clean up and get organized” day around here, which is kind of nice. I am also going to stop at That’s Amore out there to get us a deep dish Chicago-style pizza, which will most likely take care of any food needs for today and tomorrow–although since I made groceries and went to Costco yesterday, there’s not really a whole lot of room in the refrigerator–and then tomorrow I can do some writing. I also want to make it to the gym tomorrow, for my return to the working out regularly plan that I want to put into place for over the summer. It’ll also be fun to start walking through the neighborhood again, taking pictures and remembering the past again.
I guess today could be seen as a transitional one. I need to start thinking about my Scotty book, but what I would really like to do is reread some of the Scottys to get a sense of him and his world again before trying to write him again–and of course, maybe, just maybe, the best way to do that is to finally compile the over-arching Bible of the series, which lists all the recurring characters as well as the who the villains are, as well as to trace out the Diderot/Bradley family tree. I also have to figure out how to weave the elements of the story I want to include together and have the plot coalesce and take shape as well. Some of the action is going to take place in a fictional river parish (I had thought about using the same fictional river parish I’ve been using for other stories–Redemption Parish–but decided not to use that one after all; there are more than one river parishes in Louisiana as well as more than one bayou parish), and so I have to also figure that out.
Heavy sigh.
I’d also like to get this revision of “Never Kiss a Stranger” finished as well.
And on that note, I need to get ready to head out to Kenner. Wish me luck, Constant Reader, and I’ll check in with you again tomorrow.
Queer and Loathing in America 