I can’t even begin to tell you, Constant Reader, how unsettling it is has been for me–and I know this is an entirely a mental disorder of some sort–having that full laundry basket sitting on top of my unusable washing machine these last few days–to the point where I am seriously considering going to the laundromat on Magazine Street this morning an just getting it over with, you know? Annoying as it could possibly–and probably will–be, it’s really bothering me that I have that basket full and knowing that, even though the new washer is coming this Friday, the laundry will just continue piling up. It’s also unsettling because I usually launder the bed linens on Friday and obviously, I was unable to do that this past week as well. I am such a creature of habit–and such a completist–that it is unsettling to me that I started to do laundry and never got very far with it; I think that’s the real reason it is bothering me. So last night before I went to bed–we did finish the Gacy docuseries, and someone has recommended another one, that connects Gacy with Dean Corll, the Houston mass murderer who also targeted young men and boys–that I may have to check out.
It’s horrible, isn’t it, that watching these true crime serial killer documentaries gives me story ideas? I was scribbling away in my journal last night as we watched (we also watched LSU in the regional college gymnastics preliminaries; despite having an incredibly bad night, riddled with falls and mistakes, they qualified for the regional final–which tells you how good they really are. They have the potential, if everyone hits, to win the national title) and making notes; particularly for a short story idea I had a while ago for a deeply disturbing story about a young man being held by a psychotic, called “Oubliette.” I actually wrote the opening paragraphs while watching the docuseries last night, and I also realized that one of the primary reasons that the images of Gacy–those videotaped interviews are fucking chilling–bothered me so much was because Brian Dennehy was so brilliant playing Gacy in a TV movie back in the day that I always picture Dennehy whenever I think of Gacy, so adjusting my brain to register no, that really is Gacy and the reality is so much creepier than the Dennehy performance it was kind of hard to wrap my mind around it.
I wrote yesterday, and if I stick to my plan the book will be able to be turned in on Monday, which is lovely and also an enormous release of pressure for me. These final chapters are turning into something I think is kind of wonderful, but I am not entirely sure I’m going to stick the landing–I so rarely do, let’s be honest–and I am also worried about the length of the book; it’s right now already over ninety thousand words, and I don’t know that I want it to go over a hundred thousand–and at the pace I am going that is going to happen. I suppose during the editorial process I can trim ten to twenty thousand words from the book; Bury Me in Shadows also came in long (as did, now that I think about, Royal Street Reveillon) and will probably need some judicious pruning; I have until the end of this month to revise and edit it, with my editorial notes. I’m not sure why I started writing long again–but it’s also kind of nice; the last really long book I wrote was Mardi Gras Mambo and I was also beginning to think I couldn’t write long anymore.
Apparently not a problem. Although Chlorine really needs to be tight, lean and nasty.
So, this morning I am going to go to the laundromat (taking The Russia House along with me; I read some more of it yesterday), dropping off a library book, getting the mail, and making groceries. I also have a prescription to pick up, and a friend is in town and we’re going to have (socially distanced) drinks later, after I get my work done. I haven’t ha an actual drink–Paul and I were talking about this last night–since I went to New York for the MWA board meeting last year in January–Paul hasn’t had one since last year’s Carnival. How weird, right?
I can’t remember the last time I went for over a year without a drink–but it’s not like I actually missed it, either.
I am actually looking forward to being finished with this book, but am also glad my creativity is kicking into gear again.
And on that note, I need to get ready to head into the spice mines. Have a lovely day, Constant Reader, and I will check in with you tomorrow.
Last night I kept waking up, even though it felt like I was getting good rest, if that makes any sense. I finally got tired of trying to get some more sleep and went ahead and got up before eight–around quarter till, to be precise–because I have work to do and the deadline is ticking. I made some excellent progress yesterday, and have a lot more to do today. I am hoping to get the final chapters of the book completely refinished and rewritten today; so I can do mop up the rest of the week–and there will be lots of mopping up to do. This is maybe the ninth draft of the book since I wrote the first draft in 2015–but in complete fairness, all those revisions were of the first half of the book rather than the second; this is the third draft of the second half–I was struggling to find the right voice, to find the correct tense, and really, trying to figure out who my main character is or was. Most of this work has been, since I first wrote the first draft six years ago, scattered and disorganized and, in retrospect, primarily a case of me not trusting myself or my abilities and be intimidated by what I was writing about–with the occasional dose of imposter syndrome thrown in for good measure.
We watched the ice dancing final last night, and remain completely mystified by the results. Perhaps we’re partisan, but we simply failed to see the same magic in the routine by the Canadian team that resulted in them placing second in the free dance, and capturing the bronze medal somehow. But ice dance has always been controversial, and the judging has never made much sense. The Russian team that won was clearly the best in the competition; no question about that–but I also felt the second place Russian team, that finished fifth, was also better, more athletic, and more artistic, than the Canadians. But yesterday afternoon I also took some time to watch the men’s final, and it was delightful to see Nathan Chen make a comeback from a fall in the short program to win it all, his third world title in a row–the first American to do so since Scott Hamilton–and if he wins the Olympics and a fourth world title next year, he’ll be in even more elite company. The women also managed to earn the US three Olympic spots, which I wasn’t expecting to happen, so at least we’ll have as full a team as possible; I think Nathan winning automatically earns us three men for the team–but the rules may have changed, and I must confess I don’t pay nearly as much attention to figure skating as I used to. I hate this new points system; always have since it was implemented, and I don’t believe it forestalls arrangements between judges the way the old system did–not to mention the guarantee of anonymity so no one knows how any judge scored any competitor; I fail to see how this will stop collusion, but I am not the ISU.
The humidity has been ruinous on my sinuses lately; it’s so weird for it to be so hot and humid already this year. My windows are covered in condensation this morning, which is unusual for this time of year–that new HVAC system clearly works extremely well–an I am going to head to the gym later this morning for my weekend workout. The rain kept me from going earlier in the week, so for the last two weeks I’ve only had two workouts per week; not goo, but better than one and much better than not going at all. I need to get some new workout clothes, though; I haven’t bought workout shorts in well over ten years and thus they not only don’t fit properly but are also a little on the worn out side, and the more hot and humid it gets the less likely I am to want to wear sweat pants to the gym. I found some T-shirts in my T-shirt drawer back from the days when I could squeeze into a medium (I now wear extra large) and so I disposed of them as well. I really would like to get this book finished and turned in on Thursday the 1st (this week!) so I can spend my three day Easter weekend cleaning out books and going through my clothes.
I’d also like to spend some time finishing The Russia House. I read another chapter yesterday and greatly enjoyed it; I am really looking forward to spending more time with LeCarré. I also want to start reading more of these books that I keep buying and adding to my TBR pile, which is mostly out of control these days–I also need to recognize that many essays I have wanted to write about books and authors I enjoyed won’t ever happen because I will never have the time to write them, nor will I ever have the time to go back and reread the books; there simply isn’t enough time for all the reading I want to do, and I have to be more realistic. Some are simply too long–much as I loved Anya Seton’s Green Darkness, Arthur Hailey’s Airport, and Herman Wouk’s Youngblood Hawke, there’s simply no way I can (or will) ever find the time to reread those books; let alone anything by Michener (I’ve been wanting to reread my favorite Michener, Centennial, for quite some time, but probably will never happen).
And once I have this book finished and turned in, I have to do some revisions of Bury Me in Shadows by May 1; I don’t think it’s anything major, really; a much more thorough copy edit, an additional clarifying sentence here and there, and then it will be finished, and then comes the first draft of Chlorine….at long last. There are also some submission calls I want to write for as well; we’ll see how that turns out, won’t we? But I think my stories “Death and the Handmaidens”, “The Blues Before Dawn”, and “Le Feu Follet” might actually have homes I can try to get them into; and there’s another call for a humorous mystery I’d like to take a shot at as well; my stories always seem to turn out to be darkly comic anyway.
And on that note, I am heading into the spice mines. Have a lovely Sunday, Constant Reader, and I will check in with you tomorrow.
Sunday morning and the end of the weekend looms, which means I need to get up at six for the next three mornings. Groan. These last two mornings I’ve been a lag-a-bed; which of course delays Scooter’s morning insulin shot–which means I need to be certain I give it to him at the correct time tonight because I can’t given it to him later tomorrow. It looks lovely outside this morning–which is nice, since I am going to go to the gym in a moment, after finishing this and cleaning the kitchen, so I can come home and work on the book all day. I didn’t get as much done yesterday as perhaps I would have liked–I did manage to get a working timeline for the events of the book in place, something I didn’t do for Bury Me in Shadows (and my editor requested it in the notes she gave me) and as I began doing it, I realized how fucked up the timeline for the book actually was. Over the course of numerous drafts, the time of the book changed–originally, I had the book set over Homecoming weekend (why not give into every cliché of writing about high school, right?) and then, at some point, I casually did some research about the Kansas high school football season and, much to my own horror, discovered that the regular season generally ends around Halloween–I’d forgotten that it has to end earlier so it doesn’t overlap with basketball season (which is the most important sport in Kansas–always has been, always will be) unless your team goes to the actual play-offs. Yesterday I had to verify when the school semester starts, and double-checked the football season again, which was important. I had left it as Homecoming weekend but had to move it earlier into the season…and then realized in a much later draft that the story doesn’t work with that much time passing between the pivotal points of the story and Homecoming….so I realized I had to move it to the first game of the season (which makes the most sense) but I was also still going by my vague memory that my birthday in late August was always right before school starts….assuming the start of the school year hadn’t changed over the last forty years, which it obviously has; school starts in early to mid-August now; the first game of the season is inevitably either the Frida before or after Labor Day, depending on when the holiday falls, and that of course changed everything about the current timeline in the book–which will now have to be changed. There’s another pivotal event of the story that happens over the summer, and I’d planned to use the county fair as the backdrop for it, so I looked up when the Lyon County Fair is…and it’s right before the start of school–late July/early August–which again fucked with my timeline of the story until I realized I don’t have to have the fair take place when the real one I am fictionalizing does; and it’s a perfect timeline now, really; it makes so much sense for the county fair to happen, my main character’s family vacation to follow that, and for him to come back in time for the start of football season but missing the big kick-off event for the community: the bonfire, which is the night the event that serves as a catalyst for the story occurs. It means tweaking the story even more–and I still have things to add to it–and I am probably going to have to rewrite almost everything from Chapter Seventeen on, but that’s okay. I now know how to end the story, which means I have a shit ton of writing and revising to get done in the next ten days or so (since the deadline falls on the Thursday before Easter weekend, with Friday as a paid holiday, I may go ahead and take that final weekend to make sure everything is okay with it before turning it in). I have to get Bury Me in Shadows fixed in April, and I have some short stories I want to work on that month as well for upcoming deadlines. So May will be most likely when I start working on Chlorine–which means June will be when I start writing the first draft of the next Scotty; if I am able to stay on this schedule. Please God, let me stay on schedule.
So anyway, I am very pleased with what I was able to get done yesterday. When I get home from the gym today and get cleaned up, I am going to settle into my easy chair with the laptop and with Fleetwood Mac blaring on the home stereo–I made a wonderful playlist on Spotify Friday, which I will likely expand upon this morning–primarily adding every Fleetwood Mac album in order, from Fleetwood Mac thru Say You Will, with probably some solo work from the band members mixed in as well. Fleetwood Mac has really been helping me get inspired to write this past week or so; I’m glad I’ve rediscovered how much I love their music again (I never forget, I just don’t think about listening to them as much as I used to–an enormous mistake I will never make again); likewise I find listening to Taylor Swift while I am writing enormously inspirational as well; not sure what that’s all about, but whatever it is, I’ll take it. Music has always been an important part of my writing process–I’ve always loved music, and wished I had some musical talent of any kind–but alas, that was not to be. I generally do listen to music–I can remember back when I was writing Murder in the Rue Dauphine I used to put three Madonna CD’s in the stereo and hit shuffle (The Immaculate Collection, Like a Prayer, and Ray of Light) while I was writing and then I would suddenly realize the music had stopped playing and I’d written a shit ton of words.
I never got around to reading The Russia House yesterday; maybe today I’ll be able to get some work done and spend some time with LeCarré. I did take eight boxes of books to the Latter Library to donate to their book sale, picked up my own mail, and then made groceries before coming home to put everything away and work on the book. I was tempted to watch the Snyder version of Justice League, but it’s four hour length is rather daunting; it’s definitely on queue for condom packing this week. We watched the SEC Gymnastics meet last night (LSU finished second, and just .125 out of first) and then the season finale of Servant, which remains as much a mystery as it was when we first started watching, but it’s done so well and it so fucking creepy and bizarre–the acting is also pinpoint sharp, and Lauren Ambrose certainly deserves at least an Emmy nomination for her complicated and crazy Dorothy Turner, for whom motherhood has proven both a tragedy on a Shakespearean level and an all consuming passion that drives her–and those who love her–down an insane path they never should have taken, and of course everything keeps spinning insanely out of control for everyone.
And of course there’s only one more weekend of me being a Festival widow, which I am really looking forward to. I miss Paul, and spending the evenings together watching our television programs and having dinner. Scooter misses having him around, too.
I did read a short story yesterday; from Nikki Dolson’s Love and Other Criminal Behavior, called “Georgie Ann.” It was marvelously delightful, dark and twisted and chilling; just what the doctor ordered:
Georgie Ann is dead. Her husband and all of our crowd around her coffin. They stand with their backs to use and their arms thrown over each other’s shoulders. We, the dutiful spouses, black suited and Prada heeled, sit waiting for our cue to cry.
The casket is open. We’ve all done our viewing and we agree she looks great for a dead woman her age. She is ten years our senior. Was.
One of us says what we’re all thinking, “How much hairspray do you think they used? Her hair never held curls like that.”
A very stark, nasty opening the sets the mood, tone and attitude of the story very much into place: Georgie Ann wasn’t a very nice person, and her “crowd” didn’t like her very much. Our narrator certainly didn’t, and as she remembers Georgie Ann’s sins and conduct to her and all of their friends, the reader also begins to dislike Georgie Ann…and wonder how she wound up dead. This story actually reminds me very strongly of Liane Moriarty’s works, or Celeste Ng’s Little Fires Everywhere, the little hurts and slights and tiny issues that grow into darker, bad things. “Georgie Ann” could very easily be one of those novels, exploring the complexities and competitions between a group of friends that turns into something darker, possibly criminal. Definitely looking forward to delving into this collection even further.
And on that note, tis time for me to start tidying up so I can head to the gym with a clear (relatively) conscious. Have a lovely Sunday, Constant Reader, and I will catch you the next time.
Monday and another week dawns; full of possibilities both good and bad as well as potential. We are at the midway point of March, today being the Ides, of course (beware the Ides of March) with 16 days left for me to get this manuscript whipped into shape. Once that is finished and turned in I have to go back for a final pass, with editorial notes, on Bury Me in Shadows, which is due at the end of April. This pushes my writing schedule back further for the year, but that’s okay; my writing plans inevitably are always overly ambitious.
Always.
I did manage to have a sort of productive day yesterday after all; I went to the gym around noon and came back home to get started on working on inputting the edits into #shedeservedit. I didn’t get very far, but I did manage to get some of it done, which is a start. I am hoping to get all finished this week, so I can work on the rewrites that are necessary–as well as writing the new stuff that I need for it–and so I suspect I’ll be back on track with it sooner rather than later. I just have this sense of impending doom right now–not sure why this always happens, but it inevitably does a few weeks before deadline (last month by that time I already knew I wasn’t going to be finished on time, so didn’t have that feeling last time) and believe you me, I am really looking forward to being done with this. I suspect the tweaks necessary for Bury Me in Shadows won’t take the entire month to do; so I am hoping to be able to get some short stories worked on and possibly a synopsis/outline for Chlorine finished in April as well. We shall see how that turns out.
I hate Daylight Savings Time with a passion, and frankly, could easily do without that extra hour of sleep in the fall to eliminate the loss of one in the spring. It’s pitch black outside the windows this morning, which means I may be driving to work in the dark this morning–and the next mornings until such time as the sun starts rising earlier as the earth continues tilting on its axis. At least it will still be light out when I get home from work in the evenings now, which will feel slightly less oppressive than coming home in the dark. The days are getting longer now, which means they will also be getting hotter–I am curious to see how unpleasant walking to and from the gym during the dog days of summer is going to be–but I cannot allow that to keep me from going. Yesterday’s workout was a good one, and I need to remember to stay focused and push myself when I go on days when I’ve not been to the office (Tuesday night workouts inevitably will always be half-assed, but at least I am aware of that going into it and won’t be terribly disappointed by them anymore.)
I watched the final episode of Allen v. Farrow last night, and it was rather harrowing, as all episodes were. Obviously, the point of the documentary was to present the opposite side to the Allen camp’s denials…but it’s still not easy to watch. I guess it’s important that the truth of the police investigation–they felt they had enough to go to trial but didn’t think young Dylan was strong enough to withstand the rigors of testifying or going through the trial–be put out there, particularly since the decision to not prosecute was not a vindication, as the Allen camp has claimed repeatedly throughout the years, as well as the findings of the custody trial, which was also damning yet spun; and Mia Farrow herself comes across fairly well. I’d never really been much of a fan of Mia–I’d seen some of her movies, Rosemary’s Baby being the best of them–and now I feel as though somehow I’ve never been fair to her as an actress….but watching Woody Allen movies in order to see how well she played those roles is going to be a hard pass from me. I’ve never really been much of a fan of his–I think I’ve seen Annie Hall, Everything You Always Wanted to Know about Sex But Were Afraidto Ask (homophobic as the book was), Casino Royale I(technically not a Woody Allen movie, but a movie with Woody Allen in it), and maybe a couple of other earlier ones I cannot recall at this moment, and was never terribly impressed by any of them, frankly–but just figured Woody Allen movies was one of those things everyone else got that went past me. Perhaps the most damning thing for me that came out of this documentary series was learning that if a father is accused of sexual/physical/mental abuse by a mother, the mother is often not believed and loses custody herself, putting the children into the custody of their accused abuser, which is seriously fucked up.
We really need to stop assuming all women are vicious and vindictive shrews out to ruin any man they accuse of anything, really, and start listening. False accusations made from malice are rare; so why do we always automatically default–especially our legal system–to not believing ANY woman? I don’t think I’ll ever understand this, but I also remember when it first became illegal for a husband to rape his wife–even though the wife is rarely, if ever, believed; even marriage doesn’t eradicate the need for consent; the marriage vows don’t give the husband (or the wife, for that matter) ownership over their spouse’s body.
Ah, and Drew Brees retired yesterday, which saddened me. I may do an entire entry on Drew Brees and New Orleans….it’s complicated. But I wish him and his family well, and I do thank him for what he–and his family–have done for the city.
Wednesday morning and feeling a bit raggedy. Part of this is due to the Lost Apartment not having water–you can only imagine my great delight in getting a text from my neighbor yesterday afternoon at work asking if we had water, and then getting home to find out that we don’t. The story I got from the Sewage and Water Board was that a pipe had burst, but “it should be back on this evening.” She knew it was a lie, I knew it was a lie, but it was one of those situations where there’s really nothing to do but pretend she wasn’t lying and saying thank you and hanging up. Needless to say, this morning there still is no water. I brushed my teeth with bottled water and the water tank of the Keurig is full so at least I have coffee, but I can’t even wash my face, let alone flush a toilet or take a shower. Suspecting this would be the case this morning (any New Orleanian knows you cannot believe a word anyone from the S&WB says) I got my shift at the office covered and am going to work from home today.
It’s truly amazing what an effect a lack of running water can have on you. I couldn’t wash dishes, run the dishwasher, do any laundry; I cannot shave or wash my face, let alone shower; cannot flush a toilet because I don’t have enough water on hand to fill the tank–and I’d rather preserve what drinking water we have, frankly. As I was thinking about this last night–the thin veneer of civilization we have stretched over our lives–I decided that being without water was worse than being without power–certainly at this time of year, at any rate; if we lose power during the summer my position on the matter will most definitely change. This also put me in mind of the freeze in Texas and other states that don’t usually get a hard freeze or snow, and how so many people lost not only water but power as well. We don’t really hear much about that any more–the news has moved on–but from my own experience it takes a while to recover from such natural disasters, and everyone couldn’t get their water restored immediately, either–especially those whose pipes had burst. But no one is talking about that anymore, and so far as one can tell, you’d think the issue was in the past and normalcy has returned.
It also amazes me to think that I am quite literally one generation removed from, well, not having much in the line of running water. My mom grew up with a well with a pump that sent water to the kitchen sink; but there was no bathroom in her childhood home. I have hazy memories of visiting my grandmother before she had a bathroom put in and a septic tank…
So, as you can certainly imagine, last night was an “out of sorts” night for me; I was exhausted–I didn’t forget my coffee in the car, and yet completely ran out of steam yesterday afternoon while I was at the office–and being out of sorts this morning isn’t helping matters much. I did read a bit last night–nothing exciting, just my own manuscript; I’d sent the Bury Me in Shadows manuscript to the Kindle app on my iPad precisely so I could read it like it’s a finished book–and when I opened it, apparently I had been reading it already there some time in the past because it was open to Chapter Eight. So I read a few more chapters of that, watched some history videos on YouTube as well as the final quarter of the Saints win in the Super Bowl all those years ago; I’d forgotten we were trailing going into the 4th Quarter by one point, for example, but watching the interception by Tracy Porter run back for the clinching touchdown brought back all those joyous memories of how amazing it was to watch it live and hear the city cheering from inside the house. Paul got home relatively early as well–and what I mean by that is I was still awake when he got home; two nights in a row!–but he had work to do and repaired upstairs to do it while I continued watching history and sports videos on Youtube.
Really, such a fascinating life I lead.
So, at some point this morning I am probably going to go to the gym and shower there after working out–I am assuming they are far enough away from us to not be affected by this broken water main issue–and will spend the day making condom packs and doing data entry for work, all the while hoping that the water comes back sometime, adjusting my work hour appropriately to provide for that. Heavy sigh. Such is my life these days; trying to get things done, not being able to stay on top of things as more, newer things demand my attention all the time. Sometimes I despair that it will all get done, and then I have a mini-breakdown of sorts, after which I just buckle down and start pushing the boulder up the hill again. I need to get back to work on the current manuscript; I need to get caught up on so many other things; and so these setbacks–like not having water–inevitably seem much more defeating than they should. As Paul says, all too frequently, why does everything have to be so hard? He’s not wrong. I wonder this myself all the time…
And on that note, I am heading into the waterless spice mines. Wish me luck, Constant Reader!
Monday; the dawn of a new week with endless possibilities as well as the potential for endless irritations, aggravations, and anything else negative you might be able to dream up.
Yesterday I started making my way through the most recent iteration of #shedeservedit–which isn’t, or may not, require as much work as I ha originally thought–and I also had my editorial call about Bury Me in Shadows, which wasn’t the terror I feared it would be; it was most pleasant, some great suggestions for smoothing the flow of the book an making it read better than it does in its current iteration. Enormous sigh of relief in both instances. I know, I know, I shouldn’t always be so nervous about my writing, but there is a very real fear in my brain that the day will come when I will lose the ability to do this, to create and write stories an characters for people to engage with, get to know, and spend time with.
And no, I don’t know why I still have this anxiety. I have to date published over thirty novels (I don’t know how many total, really, and I don’t feel like going back and counting again) and have two more in the pipeline to get published and yet….I still suffer anxiety about being a writer, about being any good at it, and then, as if that isn’t enough, I also have anxiety about it all going away and not being able to do it anymore–and this happens any time I get stuck, or as a deadline looms, or whenever I just don’t want to do it, which is pretty much all of the time. I never cease to be amazed at how often I have to force myself to do things I actually enjoy and love to do. It makes literally no sense whatsoever.
Take going to the gym, as another example. Every single time I go to the gym, I have to make myself do it. Once I am in the gym, it’s a constant mental struggle to remain and do the entire workout without skipping anything. The great irony is that these “get back into it” workouts are actually having an effect on my body. I am down to 203 pounds–it’s been at least since 2011 since I weighed less than 205, and there were times when I thought I would never see 210 ever again–and my goal weight for this year was 200…and I am almost there by mid-March already. I can’t see myself going down much further than 200, to be honest; already my clothes are getting far too big for me and with my weird body-shape, at this point weighing less than 200 would make me look pretty strange. I need to really focus on building up my leg muscles, because that’s the real issue, but I also worry that the way they are shaped won’t make a difference if they get bigger; I need to them to get wider across when looked at from front or back–from front to back they are fairly thick already. I don’t think I can make them wider simply because of the way my leg muscles are shaped, if that makes any sense. Anyway, that’s really a long way of saying how happy I am that my body is reacting to the exercise and that I’ve lost some more weight. Perhaps that will motivate me to go and next time I won’t have to make myself.
Good one. It almost sounded convincing.
And on that note, it’s back to the spice mines with me! See you tomorrow, Constant Reader!
I slept very well last night, thanks for asking, and woke up early somehow without a pesky alarm (not as early as the 6 am mornings, but early) and feel positive and rested this morning. I am swilling my first cup of coffee–always the best one, really–and looking forward to a day of data entry and condom packing, preparatory to a weekend of working on my book. Yesterday was such a day; I made it to the gym, which was lovely, and watched a true crime documentary while making condom packs.
It was a Netflix series called Murder Among the Mormons, which does grab your attention as a title, but doesn’t really tell you anything. I suspected, as I clicked on it, that it was probably about the bombings in Salt Lake City in the 1980’s, and I was correct. I had read about the case once before, perhaps had also seen a news report about it on 20/20 or Nightline or A&E’s deeply appreciated City Confidential series back in the day (Paul and I were addicted to this show)…and while I remembered it involved forged documents from the history of the Latter-Day-Saints church (Mormon isn’t what they prefer to be called) and the so-called Salamander Letter (I never knew, or couldn’t remember, what the letter itself was actually about, but it was described in the shorter single episode as “explosive to the LDS church as it contradicted accepted church history and lore”). I was correct; it was about the bombings, but with the luxury of more time to tell the story, the series was able to delve more deeply and explain more about everything, so now I know the (forged) Salamander Letter challenged the accepted history that the angel Moroni appeared to Joseph Smith and led him to the gold plates which became The Book of Mormon, by stating that a white salamander appeared to Smith and led him to the plates rather than an angel–rooting the church in magic and the supernatural, rather than in Christian theology. (I will refrain from voicing my own opinions about that accepted history) Basically, Mark Hofmann had essentially perfected the art of forging old documents to the point where experts could not prove they were fakes. His entire business was based on this, but as always, hubris set in and because of his own greed and ambition he’d backed himself into a corner and resorted to murder to get himself out–even blowing himself up (he survived) to divert suspicion from himself. It’s an interesting story–I’ve always been interested in treasure hunts, and this kind of is that in a way, even if the “treasures” were actually forgeries, and again, the most interesting part of this story isn’t so much Hofmann’s, or even those whom he murdered, but rather the innocents he deceived or made a party to his crimes–imagine being his wife, having no idea what he was doing and then having your entire life blow up in your face? I’m finding myself more and more interested in the effects of horrific crimes on people who had nothing to do with them, if that makes sense–the criminal’s spouse and children, the loved ones of the dead–than the actual crime itself.
God, my coffee is wonderful this morning. You have to love that, don’t you? And to think, I didn’t start drinking coffee until I was thirty; I cannot imagine living life without it now. I think my next New Orleans research will be about the history of the coffee trade in New Orleans–when did coffee shops start opening? How long has Cafe du Monde been there? I know there used to be a coffee warehouse in the Warehouse District that roasted beans…imagine how marvelous that must have smelled…because I think it would be fun to do a Sherlock story about coffee. (It still amazes me how much I enjoyed writing that story.)
I’m rather looking forward to this weekend and really digging into fixing this manuscript. I have an editorial call scheduled on Sunday about Bury Me in Shadows, which has me rather nervous (Constant Reader may remember I was periodically nervous about the subject matter of the book while I was writing it; I am also concerned about the current one I am working on as well; I don’t ever remember feeling nervous about anything I was writing before in this way). But ultimately I trust my editor implicitly–every book I’ve worked on with her she’s made much better, plus she actually gets what I am trying to do with my books, which is lovely.
I need to get back to reading, too. Maybe I’ll pull some short stories out of Alabama Noir today when I finish with the condom packing.
And on that note, tis back to the spice mines with me. Have a lovely and fulfilling Friday, Constant Reader!
My word, this week has not been an easy one for our Gregalicious. Suffice it to say that I am really looking forward to this week being over and leave it at that, shall we? I mean, Jesus Christ, already.
Being low energy low whatever it has been this week–started last week towards the end, really–has kind of sucked, to be honest. I’m not sure what the problem is–and it’s usually some kind of chemical thing in my brain, I think, these highs and lows came and go–and the lows really kind of suck; I just don’t have the bandwidth or energy to face or do anything unless it’s relatively easy and/or simple. It’a also incredibly easy for me, whilst in the grips of a low, to feel defeated by almost any and every thing that requires thought or some sort of energy, and I also find myself very short of temper–which means easily annoyed, easily angered, and easily aggravated. I got home from work yesterday evening and forced myself to go to the gym–but despite the energy and good feeling that came with the workout, it really didn’t last very long and didn’t carry over the way it usually does; pushing me into a whirlwind of getting things done and organized and dashing around the Lost Apartment cleaning and straightening. I did manage to get some laundry started, but the dishes are still is the dishwasher and the sink is starting to fill with dirty dishes again. Tonight I don’t have to go to the gym so after work hopefully I’ll have the energy to put the dishes away and finish the laundry and get my act together.
But I am glad I asked for a deadline extension. There’s no way I could have finished by Monday, and that would have made the entire low thing even worse.
I guess this is what I’ve always called the malaise before, only it usually comes around after I finished a manuscript–and yes, I know I finished Bury Me in Shadows, but usually the malaise doesn’t settle in until I have finished everything contracted–I’ve always thought it was triggered by the panic of being out of contract, but since I don’t really sign contracts far in advance anymore, I don’t think that’s what causes it and it certainly isn’t the cause of it now. Interesting that all these years I’ve always been wrong about the malaise, really. I guess I am not as self-aware as I like to think I am (nobody is as self-aware as they should be and I am very aware my self-awareness has massive blind spots; but I tend to think I am more self-aware than most people–which could also be one of the big blind spots, which is a sort of self-awareness and….yes, it’s a spiral endlessly circling back on itself, isn’t it?). I watched some history videos on Youtube last night–my mind wasn’t really functioning well enough for me to either read or write, so mostly I spent the evening with Youtube videos–some interesting ones on American history, Youtube really is a treasure trove of just about anything you could possibly want to watch to waste time–and social media, but I’m really getting a bit tired of social media. I hate the new Facebook design, and I find myself there a lot less frequently than I used to be; mostly I’ve just been sharing the blog there and not really interacting with anyone, and the same with Twitter–although I do enjoy replying to trash bag right wing elected officials with “resign, traitor”–but I also am not entirely certain that might not be a part of the general malaise.
I just want to get past it, really.
My muscles are tired this morning, the way they usually are after a workout day, and I slept deeply and well. The bed was a very comfortable and warm cocoon from which I didn’t want to emerge this morning; we’re back to the normal weather for this time of year in New Orleans–cold at night and warm during the day–which means you can never really properly dress for the weather because there’s going to be a twenty to thirty degree swing in the temperature throughout the course of the day, but rather this than last week’s frigid climes. Our new HVAC system is currently in process of being installed, which is good because while it can get stuffy in the Lost Apartment during the warm times of the day, I discovered yesterday that simply turning on the ceiling fans will take care of that issue immediately–coupled with the drop outside, of course. (I just checked today’s weather–it’s currently 46 but will reach a high of 75 today–if it was humid the apartment would be unbearable today when I get home; thank heaven for low humidity times of the year) It’s so weird to turn on the heat in the car on the way to work and have to use the air conditioning on the way home because the car has been sitting in the hot sun all day. Yay? But it also means that the temperatures are rising gradually to the peaks of the summer–and I am about to find out how the loss of the trees is going to affect the kitchen and my work space. I suspect there will be dark heavy curtains in my future….
Well, would you look at that? I never finished yesterday’s post, how unlike me this is–and yet another example of how off I have been this week; yesterday was much better than Tuesday, but there was still a lot of dragging and not wanting to get things done. I came home last night–Paul was filming a musical performance for the Festival on the roof of the Monteleone Hotel, and so wasn’t going to be home until late–and decided to finish watching It’s a Sin without him. The thought had (and has) crossed my mind that a lot of what I was experiencing this week, emotionally and energy-wise, was a reaction to watching the first three episodes on Sunday night–it certainly opened a lot of doors I had slammed shut in my mind many years ago. When we talk about representation, and how it matters…well, It’s a Sin, painful and heartbreaking as it is, was probably the first time I saw myself on screen–I saw myself in these characters, and some of the scenes could have come from my own experience. I have always compartmentalized my life–it’s how I’ve coped and not gone stark raving mad over the years–and I don’t think I was mentally prepared for all the memories this show was going to bring back to me. It’s a brilliant show, really; and while I can certainly question some of the choices made–I can also argue the counterpoint position as well. It also reminding me of so many choices made during the course of my life, and how, far too frequently, shame and fear controlled my life and the decisions made. When I rebooted my life in 1994–and yes, that is precisely what I did–I closed the doors for the most part on my past. Was that the right decision? I don’t know. But what I do know is that I also decided, in 1994, to live with the choices I made and stop feeling regret–even when you know damned well decisions were made out of cowardice. It was cathartic in some ways–I’ve realized over the course of watching the show that many of the decisions I made back in 1994 when I reinvented my life were for self-protection; a metaphorical wiping clean of the slate because remembering and thinking about things and experiences and losses was self-defeating.
I distinctly remember, at thirty-three, deciding that I could no longer live my life afraid of dying, and that no one at that age or younger should have to live with that fear. It’s also when I started getting angry, about injustice and prejudice and bias and casual hatred. There’s a lot more to unpack here, of course, and I suspect.I shall be processing this for a while.
I then decided, after the cathartic cleansing weeping from viewing the last two episodes of the show, to watch something fun and utterly escapist while I waited for Paul to come home, so I watched Richard Lester’s 1973 version of The Three Musketeers, which I actually saw in the theater when it was released. I’d not read the book (but had read the Classics Illustrated version; many literary classics have only been read throughout my life through Classics Illustrated comic books), but it was a historical and I loved history; so one Sunday after church we went to see it in the theater. It’s been a favorite ever since–the serious attention to period detail was astonishing–and again, Michael York. I think it was in The Three Musketeers that my early crush on Michael York was born–so beautiful, and those blue eyes! It was fun, even if, as I watched, for the first time I realized that the motivations for the characters–the royal and powerful ones, at any rate–made little to no sense. I have been thinking for well over a decade about writing what would basically be fanfic for The Three Musketeers…and in watching the movie again last night I was able to put my finger directly on why I’ve never been able to get that sorted and written, at least in my mind: it was precisely the motivations of Cardinal Richelieu in setting the action of the story in motion that I was never able to wrap my mind around. The antipathy that existed between Cardinal and Queen (the Spanish Anne of Austria) is well documented; and there has always been much speculation about it (I read one novel by, I believe, Evelyn Anthony called The Cardinal and the Queen that posited that Richelieu also loved the Queen and her rejections of him drove his hatred of her…although, per this novel, they eventually fell in love and Richelieu actually fathered her two sons! Yeah, I don’t believe that.) Richelieu was not someone who allowed his own personal feelings interfere with affairs of state and his plans, and his plans were to break the power of the Hapsburg family while building France–and its monarchy–into the preeminent power in Europe. The idea of exposing the Queen’s potential infidelity and humiliating Louis XIII in such a manner doesn’t fit into that plan–or perhaps I am simply not politician enough to see where it would…yes, it would be humiliating to Spain and the Hapsburgs (the Queen was of the Spanish branch of the family), but the marriage couldn’t be annulled as she had already been pregnant (losing all three children), and a divorce? I doubt the Pope would have granted such a divorce…and it surely would have meant war with Spain–at the same time that Richelieu was fighting a war against the Huguenots to unify France, and that war also meant maneuvering to keep England from interfering. But it’s good to know that there’s actually a good, historical based reason in why I’ve not been able to make the story work in my head or even as I scribble notes on it. Alexandre Dumas was able to get away with turning Richelieu into his villain without explanation of his plans and why it was politically important to publicly shame and embarrass the Queen (and the King by extension), and the flimsy “The Cardinal wants to ruin the Queen so he has more power over the King!” doesn’t work because the Queen had no power over her husband, or influence with him–she didn’t from the day they were married until the day he died, and even as he lay dying he tried to prevent her from being made regent for their son, so even then he didn’t completely trust her.
So, once I get the political situation worked out, perhaps I can finally write the book.
And on that note I am heading into the spice mines. Have a lovely day, Constant Reader, and apologies for never finishing this yesterday.
And now it’s Saturday. It’s still cold in New Orleans and we still don’t have any heat but it’s not as bad as Texas by any means, and we never lost either power or water pressure. So far we haven’t had a rolling blackout, either–although they were threatened. I spent most of yesterday unpacking and repacking condom packs, while watching history videos on Youtube, done by a local New Orleanian–someone I do not know–correcting revisionist history; it began with his lengthy video on the Confederate propaganda movie Gods and Generals–which I have never seen; I tend to avoid Civil War films because they are all-too frequently Lost Cause narratives at best or defenses of white supremacy at worst–even the ones that don’t center Confederate stories. I have no desire to see either. I was raised on the Lost Cause false-narrative, and I am still kind of bitter about being taught false narratives as truth as a child. I also resent having had to spend so much of my adult life correcting everything I learned that was wrong and/or incorrect; relearning American history without the rose-colored glasses of American exceptionalism and manifest destiny firmly placed on my nose and eyes.
Writing Bury Me in Shadows, methinks, is in some ways for me kind of a reckoning with that “heritage.”
The cold is going to continue through this weekend, but tomorrow is supposed to be relatively normal late winter weather for New Orleans. It will be nice to get back to normal. It’s currently forty degrees and sunny outside, and I’ll take it, thank you very much.
Today I am going to spend most of the day rereading and revising my manuscript. I want to be able to get through the entire thing in one sitting–this way I can catch most of the repetition, and I am going to also be starting to sprinkle the new stuff through the manuscript that needs to be added. I am hoping that on Sunday I can go to the gym and start inputting the changes; Monday I will assess as to whether I believe I can finish before the deadline or not. (I am a firm believer in not waiting until the last minute to let my publisher know the manuscript will be late.) I mean, I do have another full weekend to get it all done, but it’s not going to be super easy. I have to write an entire season of a podcast–or at least, significant excerpts from said podcast–and there’s at least one more chapter that needs to be written. (Depends on the inputted changes I am going to be making as I go; the goal is to make writing that last chapter really easy by making it a “now that everything is over and has been resolved” kind of chapter.)
It’s going to be lovely to be done with the book, to be honest. I started writing this version in the summer of 2015; I wrote the entire first draft in slightly less than one month–without the last chapter; I never did write the last chapter because I knew I was going to have to make changes to the story and why write something I might have to throw completely out? I have always tried to be efficient with my writing–not going off on tangents, not writing things that will have to be cut out later (it’s so painful cutting out entire scenes and chapters)–and knowing that I couldn’t really write the final chapter until I was absolutely certain about the story itself. I know the story now–this is like the eighth draft, seriously, I don’t think I’ve ever written anything that took this many drafts (novels, at any rate; I have short stories that have been through eight or more drafts, seriously). I am looking forward to moving on from it at long last; I want to start planning the writing of Chlorine next, while also finishing some short stories and putting together some proposals for other ideas I have. If all goes well, I will be able to write a first draft of Chlorine in April, a first draft of the next Scotty in May, and then spend the summer revising and rewriting both. I’d like to spend the fall finishing other odds and ends I have in my files–“Never Kiss a Stranger” has been crying to me from the files to be finished, for one, and there are a couple of other novellas and short stories I want get done. Granted, if any of the proposals sell I will have to change my writing schedule, but if none of them do sell…well, I have plenty on hand for me to write.
I may even start a new series. I’ve been thinking that a gay cozy mystery might be fun to write. I love puzzles and lots of suspects and things; I’d love to do something along the lines of James Anderson’s The Case of the Blood-Stained Egg Cosy, which is probably my favorite cozy mystery of all time; a big mansion, secret passages, jewel thieves, international espionage–all taking place over a house party weekend at an English country home. I’ve always felt it was a shame that those wonderful old classic home house party/small village mysteries the British wrote that I loved to read really couldn’t be replicated in the US…and then later realized that is because those stories are completely rooted in the British class system and what would be comparable here and then…yeah, you see where this went, don’t you? Although some day I will figure out how to do one of those…
I WILL. And it will be marvelous.
I also need to reread The Affair of the Blood-Stained Egg Cosy again. It’s really quite marvelous; I do hope it holds up.
I’ve also been sort of paging through/rereading the Three Investigators’ The Mystery of the Fiery Eye, which in some ways was a tribute to Wilkie Collins’ The Moonstone–which I also did with my own Vieux Carré Voodoo–while not finishing the Dana Girls’ The Clue in the Cobweb. I also keep meaning to get back into reading short stories, since my mind is in that weird “I need to finish my book” place where I can’t focus on reading anything new (once the book is done, I am going to spend some serious time with Jess Lourey’s Unspeakable Things, which I had started reading before locking into “finish the book” mode), so it’s either short stories or rereads until I turn this manuscript in. Anyway, that’s one of my favorite Three Investigators books because it, too, involves a treasure hunt with vague clues (or rather, a riddle of sorts) the boys have to figure out in order to find their new young friend August’s inheritance, the Fiery Eye, a cursed jewel stolen from an idol in a fictional southern Asian nation (Constant Reader will note that Vieux Carré Voodoo also involved the need to solve a riddle to find a cursed jewel stolen from a temple in a fictional southeast Asian country). I also recently–and I don’t remember if I shared this here or not–had the epiphany that the Scotty series, in some ways, is in and of itself a tribute to The Three Investigators…if they were adults and gay and in a “throuple”, as such relationships are called nowadays (I first heard the term in a CDC training). It also occurred to me that many kids’ series involve the main character and two close friends–or if the main characters are a pair (the Hardys and the Danas) they’re inevitably given a close pal who shares their adventures (in fairness, the Dana sisters have several friends who fill that role; some of the books involve several of their friends, but the only one whose name I can recall now is Evelyn Starr–although I believe they also had a friend named Doris Garland, but I am not sure about that name). As I thought about this more, I had to wonder if this was an attempt to steer the books away from homoeroticism or the undercurrent of the main character and his/her best friend being more like a couple then as friends….but I also can’t imagine that being a concern when these books were first conceived? (Although Trixie Belden and her best friend Honey Wheeler certainly play out the butch/femme lesbian dynamic rather convincingly–which I think why in later books in the series they played down Trixie’s “tomboyishness” and tried to make her more of a girly-girl.) Nancy Drew’s first four books featured her and her dear friend Helen Corning; in book five Helen vanishes (she shows up in a couple of later books) and is replaced by cousins Bess and George (again, the butch/femme dynamic at play, even though they are made cousins to avoid such thinking…but George is so damned butch and Bess so femme people made the connection anyway). The Hardys have Chet Morton, who is relentlessly fat-shamed and mocked throughout the entire series (Frank and Joe sometimes aren’t the wonderful boys they are made out to be). I have certainly made note of the homoerotic undercurrent in the Ken Holt series (with his best pal Sandy) and the Rick Brant series (with his best pal Scotty) before; there is none of this in the Three Investigators series because there are three of them, and they are vaguely around thirteen; it is doubtful any of them have gone through complete puberty yet because they still think of girls as kind of alien creatures, which really plays strangely in the series where the male leads are in their later teens….the chasteness of the Hardys with their token girlfriends–like Nancy, Bess and George with their token boyfriends–never quite rings true to me. They don’t even kiss! That probably has more to do with their target audience (nine to thirteen year olds) than anything else, but even when I was a prepubescent kid it struck me as strange.
I still want to try writing my own middle-grade series for kids; I think I may take a month this summer and try to write one and see what happens. I’ve been planning such a series since I was a kid, after all, and my writing career lately has seemed to be all about writing the things I’ve been leaving on the back burner simmering for years.
And on that note, I am heading back into the spice mines. My book is calling to me, and I want to read some short stories with the rest of my morning caffeine. Have a lovely day, Constant Reader–and friends in Texas, hope you’re doing okay. I’ve been thinking about all y’all this past week.
Another good night’s sleep, only to wake up to a frigid forty degree morning here in the Lost Apartment. I have my cappuccino prepared, the space heater is blowing warm air in my general direction, and the ceiling fans are most definitely turned off. The kitchen is clean this morning, which is lovely–there’s a load of dishes in the dishwasher needing to be put away, but that can wait till after work–but it was marvelous to come down to a cleaned up and organized kitchen this morning.
Paul was working last evening, so I did the same. I got another two chapters of the book polished and revised; and hopefully will keep that momentum going this evening. I also started reading Jess Lourey’s Edgar finalist Unspeakable Things, and that voice! It’s quite good thus far, and I am really looking forward to getting further into it this evening after going to the gym. Yes, I have to go workout this evening; my shoulder is finally no longer sore from last week’s inoculation (hallelujah) and it has been nearly a week since I last went to the gym. My muscles and joints will no doubt protest and creak a bit as I put them through their rusty paces this evening, but I really have to get back into the swing of the regular workouts…and I also have been missing them. This is a good thing, and I am very pleased that my natural inclination of blowing off the gym has become, at least currently, a thing of the past; a former behavior, if you will.
I’ve also concluded that there are so many wonderful notes in my journals that when I am not actually writing on the book, I should start going through the journals yet again and pull ideas out of there, actually creating electronic files and folders to track the stories. I have written at least six or seven hundred words in my journal on “The Sound of Snow Falling,” and I need to convert that into a Word document as soon as I can so I can really start writing the story. I also can’t believe I allowed myself to go so long without keeping a journal; I believe it was 2017 when I started keeping them again, and it’s really been rather nice. While I no longer write for the most part by long hand–primarily to spare myself the ordeal of transcribing–I do find that brainstorming while scribbling has a restorative, creative effect; the journals were enormously helpful when writing both Royal Street Reveillon and Bury Me in Shadows–and there are an awful lot of helpful notes and brainstorming in them about the Kansas book, which are certainly coming in handy as I write the book. It has evolved so much over the decades since I started writing it all those years ago, and so much that I wrote in it originally has come in helpful over the years, being pirated and plundered for other books and stories. I am very deeply ensconced inside this manuscript now–to the point where I haven’t been thought about Chlorine since I started this deep dive into this final edit. This is unusual; earlier in my career I would become immersed in a manuscript the way I am now; but over the years it inevitably got to the point where I would always be thinking about–and wanting to work on–the next one while rushing to get through the current. I also think having this razor sharp focus is making the book better than it might have been.
I guess we’ll have to wait and see, won’t we?
I also was thinking about “The Rosary of Broken Promises” yesterday for some reason, as well as “To Sacrifice a Pawn”–two other stories I think I started writing in December; yes, December, because the idea was to write something for a last minute Christmas anthology Gabino Iglesias was pulling together (it’s always interesting to me how I will write a story for a submission call of some sort, but the story rarely ever gets published by the market I wrote it for; take “The Snow Globe” for instance. That started out being written for a Halloween anthology HWA was doing; I never finished it and the deadline passed. I turned it into a Christmas story for another anthology call; it was rejected, but now I have sold it somewhere else entirely), but of course I was in the weeds with Bury Me in Shadows and never finished it; I think the most likely thing that’s going to happen is I will spend March planning out Chlorine while finishing some of these other stories and getting them out for submission. I think I still have two or three stories in anthologies that will be coming out this year at some point; I am really looking forward to seeing the finished books. And at some point soon, I will have enough stories for another single-author collection of my own, which is very exciting.
But the sun is rising over the West Bank with pinks and reds and pale blues staining the sky; and I must start putting together today’s lunch, packing my backpack, and getting into the shower to face down yet another day of clients and work at the office. I’m also going to need to start pulling together my tax information (yay); which I’m also kind of dreading…but I can do that after I finish the book, really. No rush there at all–which is a good thing; there are few things I hate more than prepping my taxes for the accountant.
And so I shall go ahead and bid you adieu for yet another morning, Constant Reader, and hope your Tuesday is as marvelous as you deserve.
Queer and Loathing in America 