Tag: Brian Kelly

Skies the Limit

I finished my reread of ‘salem’s Lot (entry to follow at some point) and really enjoyed it, as much as I have every time I’ve reread it. It’s a marvel that the book was King’s second published novel, and while yes, it was, like Carrie, horror–but it was a completely different kind of book, in style, tone, voice and structure. How can anyone have read King’s first two books and not seen the rise of a major new force in publishing? The pacing is stunning as well; the first act is kind of charming and meanders here and there, introducing us to the characters and the town as well as letting us know something bad is coming, and it just keeps picking up steam, faster and faster, until the last hundred pages or so just fly. The ending was left open to a sequel–I remember reading once that King had written the opening of a sequel, or had the idea or something–but it never happened.

Probably just as well.

I also started my reread of The Haunting of Hill House and as ever, am completely captivated by the power of that first chapter and Shirley Jackson’s writing style.

Yesterday’s LSU game was quite fun, if stressful. As always, they got off to a relatively slow start by playing a little loose and sloppy at first; early in the second quarter LSU fell behind 17-3 because of miscues and mistakes–it easily could have been 17-14–but then the team found it’s rhythm and went on a 42-3 tear against a 7-0 6th ranked Mississippi team (who, to be fair, really hadn’t played the meat of the schedule so far; their biggest win had been Auburn, who is floundering this season) to win the game handily 45-20, and to look pretty impressive while doing so. The last time Mississippi came to Baton Rouge 7-0 and in the top ten (#3, actually) was in 2014 when an underachieving LSU beat them 10-7 (apparently, LSU is 1-5 against Mississippi when they are ranked in the Top 10–is it any wonder they hate us so? Add in to that the fact that LSU’s most legendary and iconic play of all time–Billy Cannon’s Run–was against them, and you see where their antipathy comes from. I’ll be the first to admit, I wasn’t a fan of Brian Kelly’s or his fire, but he is 100% turning this program around from the depths of the last two seasons and it’s entirely possible LSU could go 9-3 this season–maybe even 10-2 (I daren’t to dream yet; a win over Alabama this year seems almost too much to hope for; but if it happens Brian Kelly will immediately be crowned King of Louisiana) but hearing people talking about SEC titles and play-off games this year seems to be a bit premature–but watch out for LSU next year. Jayden Daniels is really quite a player–I wasn’t completely sold on him, either, to be honest, but he’s really turned out to be quite the player; fun to watch, and getting better and more seasoned and acclimated as the season goes on. Seriously, next year LSU will be a contender for sure.

And yes, it’s petty, but I also kind of enjoyed that Texas A&M lost to South Carolina last night, and good for USC, really (I started to write “good for the Cocks” because I am ten years old; but in fairness they call themselves the Cocks). Petty because they wanted Jimbo Fisher at LSU, and now having seen what he can do with all the money and resources behind him at A&M? Yeah, glad you chose College Station instead of Baton Rouge, Jimbo. Have fun with the Aggie alumni, and let us know how that goes. I can’t believe they wanted him so bad that his buy-out had no restrictions…they are either going to be stuck with him for a very long or getting him out is going to be extremely costly. Again, oh, well, too bad so sad. You had some success at Florida State, but they were already circling the drain before you bailed on them, Jimbo…and this is yet another year A&M won’t be in the SEC title game. Oh, well.

Another rather interesting football season. Tulane also won, so they are 7-1 now, too. Good on you, Wave!

I feel very rested and relaxed this morning. I was stressed during that first quarter of the LSU game, so rather than sitting in my chair stewing in my worry and letting myself get worked up (I literally sometimes get so into games that I have to remind myself, Dude, it’s a sporting event, not the end of the world) so I decided to use that nervous energy to clean the house and work on the book while I watched the game. I planned some of the next act of the book, so I can get some chapters written in the meantime, and I also pruned the books; did some more laundry; did the dishes; and cleaned the floors. I also did some filing that needed doing. Paul had some errands to run in the afternoon–he didn’t check the game time when he made appointments–so he didn’t get home until the fourth quarter, and then we watched the short programs from Skate America, which I’d recorded. The young American “quadgod” Ilia Malinin is definitely a rising star, as is Isabeau Levito, the young American woman who looks like she’ll be our best and most successful since at least Sasha Cohen, if not Michelle Kwan (although achieving more than Kwan is unlikely for any other skater). Today there’s not a Saints game, and I am going to finish this and do some things before diving deep into my book to get it going again. Paul will be gone next weekend, and LSU is on a bye week, so I have literally no excuse next weekend for not being highly productive and getting caught up on things–I still have to empty the dishwasher and fold clothes; and I want to make white bean chicken chili today as well–it’s getting to be soup and chili season in New Orleans, and I do love this time of year and would even more if it didn’t get dark so early.

I’m glad I feel rested this morning, to be sure. Hopefully I will be able to motivate myself to work my way down and through my to-do list. But I am not getting there by doing this, so I am going to bid you farewell now, Constant Reader, and head back into the spice mines.

My Heart

Ah, the Thursday before Labor Day weekend and all is quiet in the Lost Apartment…at least until Scooter realizes I’ve gotten out of bed and comes galloping down the steps to demand, rather loudly, that I fetch his breakfast.

Wow, one week from today I’ll be waking up at Bouchercon and getting ready for my first panel. I’m not getting excited about the trip just yet, but I suspect that will get started over this weekend. I was realizing yesterday that I have Labor Day off, work Tuesday, and then am off the rest of next week…why didn’t I take Tuesday off as well? Seems kind of silly to work one day, but I was trying to conserve my vacation time, I think, because I didn’t know if I would have enough earned by the time of my November trips. And of course now it’s too late. Ah, well, there are worse things than having to work on that Tuesday, really, and it won’t kill me, and why not save the vacation time for use at another time?

I see that WordPress has yet again changed the way it looks when you’re drafting an entry, and I don’t like it. I will never understand the need to continually change things that are simply cosmetic for no other reason than to make a change, you know? It’s already irritating enough they don’t have a font that I like–would it really kill them to have Times New Roman? I know my personal favorite Janson is too much to ever hope for, really–that’s never standard anywhere. Ah, well, this is what happens when you get older and get sick and tired of things changing. Excuse me while I go outside at scream at the clouds.

I worked on the book some when I got home from work last night, and it’s astonishing how bad my first drafts can be. I think this is where some of the Imposter Syndrome comes from–writing such phenomenally shitty first drafts–and to be completely honest about it, it’s always, for some reason, the series books that turn out so bad for me every time in the first draft. The stand alone books, for some reason, have much better first drafts than the Scotty books. But it’s getting there, and eventually I’ll have a first draft done that I can agonize over and change and revise and fix and make stronger.

I also watched the incredibly exciting second round match of Serena Williams at the US Open last night, in which she took out the Number 2 player in the world in three sets. She played fantastic–and so did her opponent, for whom I felt a bit sorry, given the way she completely collapsed in her final service game of the match, in which she didn’t win a single point (I think). Serena looked like the Serena of old; the level of play was astonishing. I don’t know how far into the draw she is going to make it on this last US Open of her storied and legendary career, but as I said to Paul, “this kind of reminds me of that final run Jimmy Connors made at the Open, which got the whole country excited and watching. I think the entire world is going to pay attention if she gets further into this, but winning the whole thing is probably too Disney-ending to happen, although it would be incredibly satisfying.”

And we get our first look at the 2022 LSU football team this Sunday night, when they take on Florida State. I don’t know what to expect from LSU this year–new coach, almost a complete rebuilding of the coaching staff and the team–so while of course I always want them to win everything, I won’t get down on them this year because of that, but Brian Kelly is a decent coach (I know people say he “can’t win the big game” but he DID win some big games at Notre Dame, and he was enormously successful at Cincinnati before that and at Grand Valley State before that, so who knows?) and LSU always gets top talent when it comes to players, so you never know. I don’t know if we’ll get to go to any games this season–since we finally saw them lose for the first time in person at Tiger Stadium last year, now I no longer have that same confidence that LSU will somehow find a way to win because we’re there, which of course is completely absurd. (And let’s be honest–they should not have lost that Auburn game last year.)

And on that note, I am heading into the spice mines. have a lovely Thursday, Constant Reader, and I will check in with you again tomorrow, as usual.

When Will I Be Loved

Good morning, Tuesday.

I slept very well last night–but at the same time, wasn’t terribly tired yesterday nor did I ever run out of steam. When I got home I worked on the book for a while, then gave in to Scooter’s whining demands that I sit in my easy chair and read so he could sleep in my lap. I started reading Donna Andrews’ The Gift of the Magpie–it’s marvelous, as I expected, and before I knew it I was halfway through by the time Paul got home and we settled in for a few episodes of the original Gossip GIrl–it’s weird how vested we’ve become in this show, but it’s quite fun. I also managed to get a lot done yesterday–the Sisyphean task of email turning out to be quite Sisyphean–I managed to get a lot of it cleaned out only to have more come in once I sent out mine, but I think I simply need to accept the fact that it’s an on-going process and stop punishing myself for not ever getting the inbox emptied out.

I am, after all, trying to be less hard on myself these days.

And it looks as though the coaching carousel at LSU is finally over; it looks like they will be hiring Brian Kelly away from Notre Dame. I wasn’t really sure how I felt about it at first–he has been successful everywhere he’s coached, going back to his days at Grand Valley State in Michigan–but he’s a completely different style of coach than what we are used to down here, as they endlessly say on television, “on the bayou.” (For the record, the entire state isn’t a bayou, and while there are a lot of them, most of the population doesn’t actually live on one.) But the more I thought about it, the more sense it made; he’s an odd fit, to be sure, but he’s always been a good coach and we really need that here. Our last three coaches have all won national titles, and in every instance the hire was questionable–none of them (Nick Saban, Les Miles, Ed Orgeron) had really made names for themselves before coming here, but all three were able to succeed (at varying levels) in Baton Rouge. In fact, when Nick Saban was originally hired, LSU was coming off a losing season, hadn’t won the SEC title in over a decade, and hadn’t won a national title in over forty years. (LSU has won three in the twenty-one years since he was hired; not quite Alabama level success, but I don’t think any other team has won more than two in that same time period.) So, I am willing to give him my support (for what it’s worth, and that’s practically nothing) and see how it all plays out.

I am going to try to make it to the gym again tonight. It’s been over a month since the my last time there, so I am going to have to start with the one set this week, two next, and so forth again. I’ll have another trip next month, but as long as I am consistently going before and after I won’t have to restart the training program again–and the hotel in New York has a lovely fitness facility I can use (although I tend to never work out when I travel, which is part of my problem, and working out would undoubtedly help with the sleep issue as well when I travel). I know there’s a new variant floating around out there that will eventually make it’s way over to the United States (omicron) but I am hopeful it’s not going to cause another shutdown or highly restrict gatherings in public and so forth.

And today is the last day of hurricane season, thank you baby Jesus. It’s actually been quite a year, really, now that we are about to enter the final month of it and I look back. January seems like a million years ago, doesn’t it? We had a category 5 hurricane here, a rough summer, no Carnival, a freeze on Fat Tuesday (when we didn’t have heat; I don’t ever want to be that cold again) and I actually made it up to Kentucky twice this past year. I also read a shit ton, watched a lot of movies, and finished writing two books–my short story output wasn’t what I would have liked it to have been, and I never finished the first draft of Chlorine either, but I did make some progress on the novellas I’d been developing, and once this book I am currently writing is finished I am going to go full steam on several of the projects-in-progress I have in the works; and I really do want to write a Scotty book this year. I know the plot, I know the story, and I know what I want to do with it, it’s just a matter of sitting down over the course of a weekend or something and pulling the varied thoughts and plots together into a coherent whole I can sit down and write.

I also rediscovered my love of writing this year–I mean, at least I started remembering how much I love doing it rather than viewing it as “just one more thing I have to do”, which was kind of the mentality I’d been facing it with over the last few years, which wasn’t particularly bright and definitely the wrong way to look at it.

So, as shitty as a year it may have been overall in the macro sense of life and the world in general, it wasn’t a completely bad year for me. And isn’t it better to always look at the positives?

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