Tag: book-review

We Are Family

I got all my sisters with me!

“We Are Family” is one of those songs from the disco era–the ones that still get played on oldies nights in queer bars and continues to live on. Obviously, it’s an iconic gay anthem–about our found families rather than the blood ones that so often want nothing to do with us–and it’s also really popular with sororities…at least it was back then. It’s a very joyful and uplifting song, lyrically, so it’s also fun to belt out at the top of your lungs. Disco was a really fun time for a gay boy in sparsely populated Kansas…it’s where my love of dancing really took off. The dance floor was, for many years, the only place where I felt free.

Yesterday was a decent day. We were very fortunate to not have any of that bad weather that was forecast, at least not here in the Lost Apartment. I’ve not checked on the storm toll throughout the rest of the South yet, primarily because I’ve not even finished my first cup of coffee yet. But I did see yesterday some horrific weather was happening throughout the South as the result of that storm cell yesterday, so I hope everyone got through it okay and is doing well this morning. Weather events are both terrible and terrifying. It’s kind of ironic that my current book I am writing is set during a weather event. But I feel rested this morning and I got up early (Sparky wasn’t quite as kind about letting me sleep later), and am about to start my second cup. I did okay yesterday. I was still mentally fatigued yesterday so wasn’t able to get a lot of creative work done, but managed some. I also did some chores and picked up around here, and walked to Walgreens in the morning to get butter, which I’d forgotten at the store on Friday (and I need a stick of butter for today’s dinner). Aside–Walgreens actually had stock. The one-two punch of Hurricane Ida and the pandemic dealt it a blow I didn’t think it was going to ever recover from; there were empty shelves everywhere, empty refrigeration cases, and you could never be sure they’d the one thing you needed–which happened more than once over the years since then. But I was very pleasantly surprised to see they had finally restocked, and they had things….not just the butter I needed but some other things I also needed and didn’t think they would have. NARRATOR VOICE: They did have those things, which was most pleasing to mine eyes.

This is delightful news–not quite “oh they opened a new Rouse’s in the CBD that’s actually on my way home” delightful, but it’s nice to know that I don’t have to get in the car to go get things necessarily anymore. I love when my life becomes more convenient.

I spent some more time with Moonraker yesterday, and it’s…something. There’s an unemotional distance in Fleming’s voice (he also uses the distant third person omniscient narrator style of writing, which I was trained so long ago not to use–I always use first or close third person, and it always surprises me when I read a legendary author’s work to find they use it), and there’s no sentimentality to it, either. The casual misogyny of the time is an eyeful, as well as the way Bond (and by extension, the secret service and the culture/society as whole) doesn’t really view women as people, but rather as almost ignorant children who need the guiding of a man). It’s also a good reminder that the Bond novels weren’t as over-the-top and tongue-in-cheek as the films1. The original novels definitely have a completely different feel from the movies, that is for damned sure. Fleming died around the time the first film was being made, so he never saw what Hollywood did to his characters and stories. I suspect he wouldn’t have cared much for them; the books are very cold. But it’s interesting to revisit it, and the similarities/prescience of Hugo Drax to Elmo Dusk are definitely eerie and make the book more compelling to read than it would have been a year ago.

Three out of four of the Lefty Awards last night went to friends–James L’etoile won Best Novel; Rob Osler won Best Humorous; and John Copenhaver won Best Historical–and two were openly queer writers writing about openly queer characters! Woo-hoo! The times, they are a-changing! There were also a number of other friends also nominated, so shout out to one and all the nominees and winners! Huzzah!

We did finish watching Running Point, which was a lot of fun and we greatly enjoyed it. We then watched the first three episodes of Adolescence on Netflix, which is disturbingly real. It opens with a 13 year old boy being arrested for the murder of a classmate, and the child is very definitely disturbed. We’ll finish that today probably, but I also have a lot of writing to do. We’ll see how everything goes.

And on that note I am heading into the spice mines. Have a lovely Sunday, all, and I’ll be back at some point.

  1. Ayn Rand, in writing about “heroes” in film and novels, wrote about the early Bond films in an essay about art. I remember how much she loved Dr. No–really one of the only Bonds to be done as a serious film–and how much she hated Goldfinger. ↩︎

Sharing the Night Together

Saturday morning in the Lost Apartment and all is sort of well. I slept extremely well last night, and was awakened by a very hungry and needy Sparky this morning. I didn’t mind getting up–the bed is so comfortable on Saturday mornings–but here I am, having quickly scanned through my email inbox and having finished my first cup of coffee this morning already. I feel good, actually. Yesterday was a nice day. I got my work duties completed and we went to Costco, as well as ran another errand on the way (Paul had to stop by his office, which wasn’t easy since O’Keefe is still only partially open most of the time and yesterday it wasn’t open at all. But it was no big deal, and Costco actually had several things they’ve not had in a while that I like (like a half-case of Clearly Canadian1 bottles, which is my FAVORITE sparkling water of all time; I just wish they’d bring back green apple, which was my favorite. However, during Paul’s time at the office I picked up a few things at Cadillac Rouse’s and they now carry it by the bottle as well–and had STRAWBERRY! That’s a new flavor I’ve never seen before), which is always a lovely thing. We came home, put things away (I still need to reorganize things to be more efficient) and I did some chores before it was time for the LSU-Georgia Gymnastics meet, which was very fun to watch. They had a great meet, the Tigers broke their own record for highest score ever (and I still think they were underscored), and looked incredibly impressive. They beat Georgia by almost a full point and a half, and Georgia had a pretty good score. We watched another episode of The Madness, which is still really good, and I went to bed early–probably why getting up this morning wasn’t such a chore. I also worked on some editing and paid some bills–need to do some more of that this morning, in fact.

My neck has oddly been sore the last two mornings. Maybe I’m sleeping at a bad angle, I don’t know, but it’s annoying.

Today I need to take care of some things, and I am going to spend some time trying to finish reading my book before I head into the spice mines and do some writing. I want to get both of those short stories revised this weekend, as well as get some good work done on the book as well. I need to clean out my inbox, and there’s some filing that needs doing–and as I mentioned before, I need to really organize the cabinets, the pantry, and the refrigerator to accommodate everything we got yesterday. You know, I’ve been going to Costco since at least 2016 (or whenever it opened here), and we’ve spent an insane amount of money there. I didn’t really have much of a problem cutting Target out of my shopping life when they spat in the queer community’s face last year, and I can honestly say I don’t miss shopping there in the least. When it was a viable alternative for gadgets and kitchenware and so forth to Wal-Mart, I didn’t mind spending the extra money it cost shopping there because they supported my community. Now they don’t–they seem to only want to pander to MAGA trash, who will never shop there–so they are welcome to market to and develop that market as much as they can. Good luck to you with that, by the way.

The first thing I learned in my first business course in college was “never piss off your customer base.” That’s rule number one. You aggressively use “ally-ship energy” to bring traffic into your stores, make marginalized communities your primary customer base, and then you decide to piss all over them to appease a minority that doesn’t even patronize your company? Well, keep finding out, Target. The great thing is that if you do collapse into bankruptcy, another chain will rise to take your place until you’re as forgotten as K-Mart.

And good fucking riddance.

Heavy sigh.

I took a little break before finishing this to have breakfast and read some more of The Bell in the Fog, and got so caught up in the story that I just went ahead and finished it–and I have thoughts (more on this later). I did really enjoy it, and I have to say again how exciting it is to be a queer crime writer/reader now…because there are so many amazing queer crime writers publishing today. Y’all need to check out Lev AC Rosen if you haven’t already–stop everything and get the books, okay? You can thank me later. I also think my next read is going to actually be a reread; I may also read something new concurrently. I want to revisit an original Ian Fleming James Bond novel; it’s been a very long time since I read one of the Ian Flemings, and that revisit (Live and Let Die, to be exact) reminded me that the books were written in a horrifically bigoted era. I read the Ian Flemings all when I was a teenager, and I did enjoy them–even as I saw they were very different from the films; I was able to read them as a different thing from the films rather than “the movies are better” or “the films ruined the books” or any of that sort of thing. I mean, it’s right there in the name: adaptations.

But I am going to bring this to a close. We just had a downpour, and the sun is out again. I am going to go get cleaned up, read a little bit more, and then get back on the writing horse. So as I prepare to go into the spice mines for the rest of the day, I hope that you have a lovely Saturday, Constant Reader, and I will check in with you again later.

I don’t know why precisely (it could be the utilitarianism of the room) but this picture always makes me think “bath house.”
  1. I used to drink Clearly Canadian in the early 1990s. It’s the only sparkling water I’ve ever actually liked, and then I couldn’t find it anymore. I started finding it again a few years ago in stores…but the gold mine is when they have the half-cases at Costco. Three bottles of four flavors–and while there’s one I don’t like (cherry), it’s bearable. ↩︎

Ooh Baby Baby

Sunday morning and it feels cold here in the workspace again. I slept later than I’d intended (getting up at my usual time for work is going to be horrific tomorrow), but we’re still getting back to normal around here. I drove uptown yesterday to get the mail, and most of the snow is gone (bits here and there that haven’t melted yet). I made groceries, too, but I was right about the store being picked over; no deliveries had been made yet, but I didn’t need to get much in the first place, which was great. I was still exhausted when I got back home, so I settled in and watched the US Figure Skating Championships with Paul before we moved on to season 2 of The Night Agent, which is fun enough (I remember loving the first season, but am not loving the second as much as the first. but the main character, played by Gabriel Basso, is very sexy). I didn’t write anything yesterday because I was so tired, and my brain was a bit too fried to read anything. My shoulder was also very sore, and it feels tight and uncomfortable this morning, so I might push today’s gym visit to either later on today or later in the week. I’ll probably try to read some more this morning, and I’ve pretty much zeroed in on She Who Was No More as my next read because it’s French, so completely different (most likely) than most crime novels, especially those of its time. And my next read, methinks, won’t be in the crime family; I have books by Celeste Ng, Jami Attenberg, Valerie Martin, and Ann Hood in the stack, so general fiction next rather than genre.

I also read this marvelous thread about Huckleberry Finn that reminded me that 1) I’ve never read it, and 2) I really should. I was never really interested in Mark Twain as a writer when I was growing up; we were force-fed The Adventures of Tom Sawyer in junior high, and I absolutely hated that book; Tom was an asshole and thoroughly unlikable (I’ve always read books and watched film/TV with this perspective: would I like them in real life? I hated Tom, and the only character in the book I actually cared about was Huck, because he seemed decent–certainly more so than Tom, which was an interesting early lesson in how there’s no reward in life for virtue; Tom was acceptable to people as an orphan being raised by his aunt–whereas Huck was “trash”, despite his bad circumstances of having a criminal father and very poor and from the outside of “society.” The only thing I really took away from reading Tom Sawyer was that society, and it’s thoughts and opinions, were really stupid and required behaving towards people based on a caste system that did not tell whether someone was actually a good or bad person, and how wrong castes in a civilized society are–and really, how unAmerican society can actually be (I’ve always hated snobs, mainly because I am usually the one on the receiving end of their scorn)…which, fifty years later, can concede was a pretty good lesson. But I couldn’t get over how the teacher was trying to push Tom on us as a comic hero–which seemed to encourage that kind of behavior–and never liked Tom and have had no desire to revisit the book, and it also kept me from reading more Twain (we also had to read the jumping frog story, which I also hated) for well over a decade–and it’s why I also have never read Huckleberry Finn.1 When I did come back to Twain in my mid-twenties, I read the lesser known books–Pudd’nhead Wilson, The Prince and the Pauper, A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court, and the essay collection Life on the Mississippi2—but never got around to Huck; maybe because it was praised so highly? I should probably correct that this year, and I should probably finally read A Confederacy of Dunces, too. Sigh. I know, I know, I’ve never read the great American novel or the great New Orleans novel. Maybe this year.

The NFL conference championship games are today, and I only care because I’d really enjoy seeing Jayden Daniels go to the Super Bowl and make history as a rookie; one of the great pleasures of this past football season is seeing the Washington fans–and the NFL, really–fall in love with LSU’s Heisman Trophy winner. I don’t know if they’ll beat the Eagles today or not, but hey, when was the last time the Commanders3 made it this far? I won’t watch another team in the play-offs–feels too much like cheating on the Saints–but I look forward to hearing the scores later on today.

I’m actually looking forward to going back to work this week, believe it or not. This unexpected weather-related week at home was a lovely and pleasant surprise, but at the same time I like having structure to my life. Yeah, it’s very easy to not be motivated when you’re at home and have things to do, but if it was a permanent condition I’d do better with it.

And on that note, I am heading into the spice mines. Cleaning to do, coffee to drink, and lots of writing and reading to get caught up on, so I am going to bid you adieu this morning and…may be back later. One never can be sure, after all. Have a lovely Sunday!

  1. When books are overhyped to me, I end up being disappointed by them. ↩︎
  2. The essays are actually kind of brilliant. ↩︎
  3. I’m also really tired of the racist fans who won’t let go of the old team name. You lost, get over it. ↩︎

Surfin’ in a Hurricane

Scotty X.

The tenth Scotty book.

I cannot believe I am writing my tenth Scotty book–the series that wasn’t supposed to be a series, then turned into a trilogy, and here we are on the tenth volume. I started writing the first book when we moved back to New Orleans in August of 2001, and here I am, nearly twenty-four years later, writing another one. I never dreamed this series would last this long, would continue to draw readers (or keep the ones I had), and do so well for me. 1

I’ve told the story of how I came up with the idea for him many times before (sometimes I wonder how much that story has adapted and changed over the years), but basically I had the idea for the story of Bourbon Street Blues first; one year Paul and I had managed to get the prime balcony spots at the Parade to look out over the Southern Decadence crowd one afternoon and I saw one of the dancers from the night before trying to make his way through the crowd in his cut-off sweatpants and string-strapped tank top, carrying his bag of “dance wear,” and not having much luck, as he kept getting stopped and touched and flirted with when the poor guy was just trying to get to work. It was mildly amusing, and then I wondered about how hard it would be to try to get away from someone trying to harm you in such a crowd, and then it became about the dancer trying to get away from the crowd, and I actually scribbled it down on a cocktail napkin, which I put in my wallet and found, a few days later. I did open a document and type up the note and some other thoughts and ideas, but I never thought anything would ever come of “Decadence stripper thriller,” but it was always there in my files. Every so often I would come across it, and think, I really do need to do something with that. I had already written a short story called “Bourbon Street Blues,” which had nothing to do with the stripper (although it actually was the seed from which Death Drop sprouted from–so yes, the moral of this overarching story is never throw any ideas or thoughts away because they will come in handy someday.

And isn’t this cover magnificent?

Bold Strokes always does well by my covers.

This title was actually originally the title I was going to use for Scotty IV (which ultimately became Vieux Carré Voodoo)–only back then it was Hurricane Party Hustle, and it was supposed to be set during an evacuation; I wanted to do something Man in the Iron Mask-ish, with the boys being hired by a gay man who was disfigured by having acid thrown in his face, to find out where his attacker–scion of a wealthy and powerful local family–has escaped to, and if the family was lying about not having any contact with him–and the whole thing would take place during an evacuation for a hurricane that didn’t come here; which was my primary experience with hurricanes at the time, and I always thought it was kind of an interesting and surreal thing to experience. There would also not be a lot of cops around during that time, either, which could make it even more fun and interesting.

Scotty III was delayed for a year because of personal problems and issues, but I finally turned in Mardi Gras Mambo a year and four months late; I also included the proposal for the fourth book, Hurricane Party Hustle, which I intended to be Scotty’s last hurrah. I would tie up all the hanging threads from Scotty III and bring the series to its natural close, at which point I was going to do something different; I was also planning on ending the Chanse series after one more book. I decided I was going to go back to school and get my master’s in creative writing, and maybe even a PhD. I got all of that set into motion, but within a couple of weeks, Katrina came along and blew up the lives of everyone in its path, and obviously, I couldn’t write a hurricane book for Scotty after the catastrophic failure of the federally built and maintained levees. I certainly couldn’t write anything funny. After a few years had passed, I decided hurricanes were not something I should write about2, and came up with another idea for Scotty–the movie star lookalike book, which I thought could be absolutely hilarious. But time had passed, and the publisher didn’t think Scotty had an audience anymore, so they passed on it. (I eventually used that for a Chanse book, only he didn’t look like the movie star, it was someone else.)

And every time I finish writing a Scotty, I’m never sure if I am going to write another. I never say never to him, though, the way I did with Chanse; I’ll always write Scotty if there is a way to make it interesting for the readers and challenging for me. I don’t want to write them by rote (which is where I felt I was going with Chanse), and so, yeah, as long as fun ideas that are challenging keep coming to me, I’ll keep going. I never want to get bored writing him, you know what I mean? That’s just not any fun. I decided to write this one as a challenge to myself and I am having a lot of fun with it.

And I changed the title from party to season; and have it take place during an actual hurricane in the city. Party just seemed too frivolous, and I don’t to give anyone that wrong idea.

I’ll let you know when it’s up for preorder, Constant Reader, and thank you for always reading him.

  1. I also just remembered that my first friend, as a child, was named Scotty. Interesting. He was the first friend, come to think of it, who decided not to be my friend one day and never spoke to me again without me ever knowing why. Hmmm. ↩︎
  2. I dealt with Katrina and its aftermath, as well as another hurricane evacuation, in the Chanse series, which I did finally end in the teens. ↩︎

Don’t Just Stand There

Let’s get to it, strike a pose there’s nothing to it VOGUE vogue vogue…

Sorry, couldn’t help myself there! Hard to believe how old that song is now, isn’t it? Still a bop, too.

It’s forty degrees outside this morning and it’s a biting cold today. I overslept this morning, not stirring out from underneath my comfortably warm pile of blankets; I also laundered the linens yesterday so they were clean so it was that marvelous snug, clean feeling beneath the blankets, and maybe, just maybe, it’s the weight that makes me sleep better, like how a weighted jacket will help keep a dog calm. Who knows? I have some things to do today, but this morning I am just going to drink my coffee and read for a bit before I get to work on chores and writing and some other things I need to get done. The kitchen/office isn’t nearly as messy as it can be, so won’t need much effort to get it together. There’s also LSU Gymnastics to watch today–some kind of quad meet with some of the top teams in the country–so that could be fun to watch, and I can also read during it, too. I read more into my new read, Herman Raucher’s Ode to Billy Joe, which reads well but sometimes seems inauthentic, but more on that later. We also started watching Disclaimer, which is exceptionally good, and what incredible performances from the cast! I am really curious to see how this all turns out, to be honest–and I may even want to read the book on which the show is based–because yes, I need more books on hand to read, but I’ve been good about buying books for the last two years and so splurging on another isn’t a terrible idea. (I’ve been trying to only buy non-fiction, if I buy anything. Caveat: I am still buying the books by writers I love to read when they release a new one–or an impressive debut or something. But I also don’t bulk buy anymore, either. My book budget has dramatically declined over the last two years while I try to get my spending and my overall finances back in order.)

I’m still doing my German lessons on Duolingo, and I am kind of pleased with not only how much is coming back to me (and it’s been decades), and how much I am retaining that’s new. I am hoping that doing a German lesson or two every day will also help me with my short term memory loss.

I had a lovely time dancing on Anita Bryant’s grave yesterday, how about you? I also blocked some people who dared to tell me I was a terrible person for celebrating her death; I don’t need your permission to feel, nor do I need your sanctimonious self-righteous judgment,1 nor do I need to either explain myself to you, nor do I give two fucks about what you think–so, yeah, bye bye bitch, it’ll be my great pleasure to never under any circumstances ever deal with or talk to you again. I’m too old for your nonsense, nor am I going to waste any of my time educating your stupid ass. Some gay on Threads posted about not understanding the vitriol toward Anita Bryant–who made “life difficult for a few people in the 1970’s.”2 How can anyone be so fucking stupid as to not draw the connecting line from Anita Bryant and her principle backer, Jerry Falwell, to his involvement with Ronald Reagan to the callous Republican response to HIV/AIDS. So, she is indirectly responsible for the deaths of everyone in this country from AIDS, not to mention all the kids who committed suicide because of her “christian love.” Yes, I am officially embracing my ‘grumpy old gay” persona, so watch yourselves. I am reclaiming my time, and if you ever say something stupid or ignorant or bigoted–whoooooosh, that’s the sound of you exiting through an airlock. Have fun trying to breathe in airless space, okay? (Just kidding, enjoy suffocating.)

Get back to me when you’ve acquired a soul.

And on that note, I am heading into the spice mines. Have a lovely Saturday doing whatever you so choose, okay, Constant Reader? I may be back later, one never knows.

Tom Holland in Men’s Fitness.
  1. I laughed really hard at one older gay writer who pulled out the old “I’ve forgiven Anita Bryant, and how you react to her death tells me more about you than it does about her.’ How he can breathe up there on his high horse of moral superiority, but then again I didn’t become famous for writing the stupidest episode of a popular television series, so CLEARLY he’s a better person than the rest of us! However will I go on, being judged by such an enormous talent? For the record, I turned on Stephen King after aftr decades of fandom, beginning with Carrie, for lauding The Chatelaine of Castle TERF and asking about her next book under a man’s name about a man when her most recent work was a transphobic hate crime. Donated all my copies of his books–including unread ones, stopped following him everywhere, and haven’t bought anything new of his in several years. I stopped reading STEPHEN KING; you think you mattered more to me than my favorite writer for forty fucking years? ↩︎
  2. I am still shaking my head at the stupid ass (whose profile picture was of him flexing his muscles shirtless). Maybe fucking crack a book before opening your stupid mouth and making an ass of yourself publicly? ↩︎

I Like It Like That

I like it, I like it, I like it like that!

That was another song turned into a great gay dance remix back in my slutty single days. It made me laugh when it became a Burger King commercial; it’s weird to hear something you were dancing to and singing along with at three in the morning drenched in sweat and missing your shirt being used to sell Whoppers, but could there be anything more indicative of what our country is all about than art being used to sell products? There’s nothing in this country we won’t commodify, is there?

It’s cold again this morning–33 degrees outside, and I can certainly tell this morning from the cold seeping in through the windows. Our power went out overnight; Paul was up working on his laptop, and kept working on his laptop until the power came back on, two hours later. Paul isn’t very tech savvy, but he does know how to turn his phone into a hotspot and connect so he’s on-line. (I had all the Entergy alert emails in my inbox when I got up this morning.) Not sure what caused that–we rarely lose power outside of hurricanes–but wouldn’t be surprised if it was cold related, somehow. Tonight I have to run errands on the way home–I was tired when I got off work yesterday, but did manage to write for a bit; will try again tonight–and also have to deal with a jury duty summons, which is aggravating. It’s a pain to deal with; I can’t get coverage for my clinic shifts if I don’t know I am going to serve or not, you know. Ah, well, something else to deal with, I suppose. I don’t mind jury duty–I actually enjoyed serving the one time I was picked to sit on one, and even got a book out of it, so more power to jury duty, seriously–but the hassle of dealing with re: work isn’t that awful, either. Of course, it’s criminal court, so as a crime writer I doubt I’d get picked (I made sure to mention “award-winning crime writer” on the on-line registration this morning, as well as “sexual health counselor”; I can’t imagine either would be on any attorney’s “oh we need HIM for sure” criteria); but as I said, I don’t mind being picked, once I get the work situation sorted. I’ve also been called to serve in February, during Carnival, which is simply delightful–but then again, maybe Scotty could be called to serve on a jury during Carnival? That could be interesting.

So, all the social media sites connected through Fuckerberg’s Meta bullshit have done away with fact-checking, and quietly did away with protections for marginalized people (including queers) one can only assume that Zuck the Fuck has his head firmly implanted between some massive sagging orange butt cheeks. Have fun up there, oligarch. There was a reason you didn’t get laid until you were rich enough to attract women, and it wasn’t how weird and pasty you look, you sociopathic cretin. But will all the billionaires, oligarchs and tech-bros united behind this government, in order to better loot the country and burn the world to the ground, backpedal if and when this regime gets the Reign of Terror they plan to implement gets turned back on them? The last time we had robber barons it eventually led to the collapse of our economy, which then spread world wide and led to World War II. So glad nobody in the stupid country can be bothered to read history, or read it correctly. If your knowledge of US history is predicated on reading books by Bill O’Reilly, congratulations on joining the Manifest Destiny cult–but you know nothing, Jon Snow. I don’t know if I am ready to leave Facebook, but it’s not been fun to even be there much anymore, and I care a lot less about Threads. Maybe it’s time we all admit social media was a destructive force to our society and we can go back to direct messaging or text or whatever…although if social media continues to be throttled to death by greedy billionaires, what will publishers tell us to do to market books anymore? (Social media does not sell many books, no matter what anyone says; it was just another methodology for publishers to place the onus for marketing and promotion on authors while cutting marketing budgets.)

And every day that passes brings the country closer to the abyss of the looters being in charge again. We’re very close to a breaking point–and while I am all about class solidarity for sure, I am not so willing to overlook so many racists and homophobes and white supremacists, either. Sure, solidarity to bring back regulations and anti-trust and anti-monopoly laws, Medicaid (not Medicare) for all, and to rebuild the country’s infrastructure and educational systems are the most important battles right now, and I will fight with anyone shoulder-to-shoulder to save this country from the doom that came for every empire in history so far, but those social issues aren’t going to go away, either–and once we get the rid of the major enemy, than we can focus on societal ills like prejudice and bigotry and government-sourced religion.

And on that note, I am heading into the spice mines. Have a lovely day, stay warm, and I’ll be back tomorrow morning.

I Do Love You

Saturday morning in the Lost Apartment, and feeling good and rested. I slept in this morning, and Sparky let me! I lounged in bed until almost nine. Sparky did try to get my up around the usual time, but he graciously gave up and slept on my pillow just above my head so he could start pestering me again the moment my eyes opened and I got up. I wound up turning the heat on last night, intending to turn it off before I went to bed, but was very tired and forgot. This morning it’s comfortable, so I am not sorry I forgot.

Yesterday was a pretty good day, all things considered. I drank an awful lot of coffee yesterday morning, to the point that by the time it was ten thirty I was feeling like yeah that’s enough, switch to something else. I got my work at home duties done, picked up the mail and made a little groceries, after which I came back home and worked on cleaning up the house. We also finished season one of The Diplomat (one hell of a season finale, whew), and I picked up some and did laundry and the dishes and puttered around. I read for a little while1, which was nice. It was lovely having a relaxing and productive day. Today I have to run a couple of errands, and I’m going to try to get some writing done while cleaning some more around here. I want to drop off another box of books to the library sale–the laundry room shelves are almost completely denuded of books–and there’s still some straightening up and organizing to do around here, like always. It never ends, and I am finally truly appreciating my mother’s McDonalds2 “clean as you go” mentality; she never left a mess for later and always cleaned it, and was never able to relax as long as there was a mess somewhere in the house that needed attention. (I told my dad once, when he was talking about how hard she worked on the house all of the time, “Well, she liked to be the best at anything she did, and she saw the house as her job.”) Neither my sister nor I have completely inherited Mom’s obsessive to the point of OCD cleanliness; but I do think if I didn’t have to go into the office every day my apartment would be a lot more pristine; it certainly was when I worked at home all the time. I want to keep my house the way my mother kept hers, but I just don’t have the time and am always playing catch-up.

I had the Indiana-Notre Dame game on briefly for background noise while I sat in my chair and read; eventually turning it off. There are three games today (Ohio State-Tennessee, SMU-Penn State, and Texas-Clemson) which I will again probably have on while I do other things. I turned the game off last night because it wasn’t even remotely interesting enough to serve as background noise; my utter hatred for Notre Dame, and hating seeing them win a game, any game, had a lot to do with it. I don’t much care about any of the games today, as every team playing today I either dislike intensely or don’t care about in the least (if I was forced to pick teams to root for, it would be Tennessee, SMU, and Texas–and only if forced as I despise the two UT’s and don’t have a feeling for SMU at all), so not paying much attention will actually work. We’ll have to find a new show to watch–several shows we like have come back with new seasons, and there are new ones that look interesting to me. There are also some movies I’d like to see (Alien Romulus comes to mind), too. We’re still planning on seeing Babygirl on Christmas; it’s showing at Canal Place, which makes it a bit easier to get to–but driving out to Metairie is hardly the end of the world, either. I was thinking about rewatching something last night, something Hitchcockian; Psycho or Rebecca or even Notorious, but didn’t feel strongly enough about any of them to start them up, alas. My mind was kind of floaty last night by the time it was time to put something on and watch it.

I do feel, though, like this is going to be a good, productive, relaxing weekend. I don’t know what Paul’s plans for today are, but I want to read some more, possibly finishing the book I am reading (Winter Counts) before moving onto my next read, which will require some thinking about. So many amazing books I have in my TBR pile, and getting further and further behind as the books continue to pile up. But…that’a always going to be the case, isn’t it? There are always going to be too many books to catch up on over the years, aren’t there? And I would certainly hate to ever get to the point where I have finished my TBR stack and had nothing else to read. That would be my idea of hell–although I could and would always reread something. I used to reread books all the time when I was younger, but now? I barely have time to read, let alone reread something. I’ve not even done my annual rereads of Rebecca and The Haunting of Hill House in years. I’ve not even looked over Daphne du Maurier’s short stories, which are so chilling and creepy, in years. Bad Greg, bad Greg!

But on that note, I am going to bring this to a close and head into the spice mines; make a list of what to get at the store, what to do today, and get doing some chores. Have a lovely Saturday, Constant Reader, and I may be back later. One can never be certain.

  1. I was horrified to pick up a copy of an original text of a Hardy Boys book, The Mark on the Door, and was horrified to see how horrifically racist it was. I’d never read the original text version–I’ve not read all the original texts, but I have read all of the revised texts, and the later new ones in the original canon. I’m definitely going to address this particular instance. The book was published in 1934, less than twenty years after Pancho Villa and his raids were splashed all over the newspapers…let’s just say that’s probably what most white US citizens in 1934 thought on those rare occasions they thought of Mexico. It was also the time of movies about the Cisco Kid and…remind me why those were the good old days again? ↩︎
  2. For the record, she never actually worked at McDonalds; but she had the same mentality about cleanliness. ↩︎

Get On My Love Train

Monday morning and back to the office blog! I feel awake, but kind of not completely yet, if that makes sense? It does in my fevered brain, at any rate. I didn’t get as much done this weekend as I wanted to, but I did get some things done. I did some actual writing yesterday, and I did get some work done on something else I’m working on. Not a great weekend for productivity, but I feel like I can face the office this morning. That’s a plus, right? It’s always good to start off the week feeling refreshed and rested both physically and mentally, right? So I am not sorry the weekend was wasted, because it really wasn’t. Likewise, the writing isn’t very good, but at least I did some, you know? It was excruciating getting a thousand words down, but I did, and while it didn’t alleviate my mind about getting back in the writing saddle, it’s something.

Paul wasn’t feeling well yesterday, so last night we started watching the new Prime show Cruel Intentions last night, and it’s better than I was expecting. I am a big fan of the original story (the book was Les Liaisons Dangereuses by Choderlos de Laclos; obviously filmed as Dangerous Liaisons with Glenn Close and John Malkovich), so was curious how this adaptation would work. The remake of the story as Cruel Intentions, with Sarah Michelle Gellar and Ryan Philippe, set at an exclusive elite school for the rich, was quite excellent–so I was curious about the new version, which updates the story yet again, this time to an exclusive college’s Greek system. I love this story, and did an homage to it in one of my erotic novels–which I wish I could get a do-over on, to be honest. I may need to reread the book again at some point, too. I love my conniving nasty French nobles, you know?

One thing I’ve not remarked on yet–mainly because I keep forgetting every morning–is to mention the shockingly excellent news that four queer writers were included on Sarah Weinman’s Best Crime Novels of 2024 in the New York Times! Three of them–John Copenhaver (Hall of Mirrors), Margot Douaihy (Blessed Water), and Robyn Gigl (Nothing But the Truth) are friends; the other, Katrina Carrasco (Rough Trade) is someone I don’t know but have been aware of for quite some time. I actually blurbed Blessed Water, which is exceptional. I do want to revisit it in order to write about it, and I have yet to get to John’s book–and I am very behind on Robyn’s series. But how wonderful is this? Not just one, but four queer authors on an important Best of column in the paper of record (which I still haven’t forgiven for its crimes of the last decade at least)? When I was first starting in this business, we didn’t even dare to dream of that kind of outcome for our books; and Sarah is so smart and knowledgeable about crime fiction and the genre–she absolutely knows what she’s talking about. I always enjoy talking to her, and this is so awesome for the queer authors; it’s the first sign from the Times that queer work is just as valid as other crime fiction! So, thank you, Sarah!

And it’s nice to see some diversity of thought in that vile paper for a change.1

So, I am hoping to get this work done so I can get back to writing. I owe some short stories I need to get underway, I need to get back to work on Scotty, and I am also writing this other thing, too. I’m starting to feel like I’m lazy, more than anything else, and finding excuses not to work anymore. This shall not stand.

And on that note I am heading into the spice mines. May you have a Monday as lovely as you are, Constant Reader, and one never knows–I may be back later.

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  1. And no, this doesn’t mean I’ll resubscribe. I will never forgive them for their role in undermining democracy and the rule of law. ↩︎

Honeymoon Feelin’

Monday and back to the office with one Gregalicious.

I got absolutely nothing done this weekend! Isn’t that positively shameful? I probably should feel worse about it than I do, but here we are. Yesterday I got sucked into the vortex of chores and reading my books (Winter Counts and The Demon of Unrest), finished watching some documentaries I’d started, and just, I don’t know, rode the low energy wave? I had gotten up early yesterday morning–I’d forgotten to take my pills last night, so I woke up at two and never really fell back asleep, and finally I let Sparky coax me out of bed around seven; it was chilly and the bed was quite warm and comfortable. I started doing things, and then around eleven or so the caffeine started wearing down and so, frankly, did I. I decided to eat something and take a reading back, and then hours passed as I read, alternating the books as well as doing chores and the occasional snack while Sparky slept comfortably in my chair–leaving very little room for my legs. I checked out the news, watched the first episode of the new Dune show, and just kicked back. It was kind of nice, and I think I’m going to have the energy to start getting things done starting tomorrow. Yay, me!

I’ve certainly been pushing everything off, haven’t I? Bad Gregalicious, bad Gregalicious. But I was also wondering where and how this Thanksgiving holiday was going to hit. It was always Mom’s holiday, you know? And last year I scheduled my surgery the same week so I’d be too focused on recovery and the post-surgery horror to be sad or depressed. I don’t think I was overtly either this past weekend, but it could account for the low energy and the inability to get much done or stay focused for very long. Maybe I shouldn’t have put off facing this holiday without Mom till this year, and unfortunately, I was also home alone for it, with just my emotional support cat. It’s actually kind of sweet how he’s been glued to me the entire time I’ve been in the house since Paul departed. I don’t know if that is separation anxiety for him, or if he thinks I’m lonely and need the companionship.

In either case, it’s terribly sweet.

I am pleased that I got some books read, and some others started; I’ve also had a lot of thoughts about story revisions and endings as well as what to do with the new Scotty. I need to make a to-do list (believe it or not, I never did make one, other than the chores one–and I did get almost all of those done!), and I need to start thinking about goals and plans for the new year. Yikes! It’s almost 2025. How scary is that? Fifty years ago, I was heading into the winter break for my freshman year in high school–and trying to write a book set during that time (I wrote the first chapter in my head this weekend, here’s hoping I can find the time to type it up) in the present. Fifty years ago I was a freshman in high school. My parents had just turned thirty-two. How wild is that? I couldn’t imagine being my grandparents’ age back then, yet here we are.

Amazing what a difference taking my pills makes; I slept like the proverbial stone1 last night, and it was so warm and comfortable I really didn’t want to get up–it’s forty-four degrees here this morning–but Sparky made sure I did (he was hungry), and I do feel good this morning. Given how little work I actually did since I came home early from the office last Tuesday (I’ve been out for nearly a week!) We’ll see how the day goes, won’t we? Paul comes home tomorrow night (huzzah!) and the rest of the week will be normal; no more holidays for another couple of weeks, at least. Hopefully I’ll get back on track this week and start getting stuff done; I also have a shit ton of emails that I’ve been avoiding and I need to answer them. I think I have to work in the clinic today because one of my usual people is out, and I think the schedule for today is pretty booked; Mondays are always our busiest days, for some reason–getting it over with, most likely–and it’s usually my in-office Admin day, but we were super-slow last week and I am all caught up on that work, at any rate.

Reading The Demon of Unrest is actually kind of timely, and I am spending more time with it than my other read–primarily because everything I’m reading sounds so much like the times we are living in now–a country rife with division and hatred of the other side, fake news, the inability to listen of either side to actually hear the other side and not just assume what they really meant, etc. Larson does point out the deep hypocrisy of claiming “states’ rights” to allow slavery, but refusing to obey the Fugitive Slave Act by any free state was arguing for states’ rights. As always, the racist conservatives wanted their cake and to eat it with ice cream as well. How can you argue that the Federal government be ignored on the one hand but Federal law overruled state law at the same time?

Some things never change.

And on that note, I am going to get ready for work. Have a lovely Monday, Constant Reader, and I may be back later–stranger things have happened before.

  1. I wonder…if “sleeping like a stone” derives from tombstone, so it’s the same as “slept like the dead”? ↩︎

Woman to Woman

I love history, and I especially love French history.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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