Tag: Cabildo fire

Lust for Kicks

Monday morning and back to the office with me this morning. I don’t feel fatigued, but I also didn’t want to get out of the warm bed or out from under my pile of blankets. But the coffee is going down easily and tastes marvelous, and the Lost Apartment is mostly clean; I didn’t finish the downstairs yesterday so there’s some touching-up still necessary tonight when I get home. I’m hoping that I won’t be too tired to do that necessary touching up. I certainly don’t want to leave it for the weekend, especially since I don’t have my work-at-home day this week since we’re having an “in-service” day so I have to come in.

Paul had a board retreat so he was out of the house for most of the afternoon and into the early evening. I worked on the kitchen and finishing the living room some, had groceries delivered, and made Greg’s Swedish Meatballs for dinner (they were superb; the alterations I made this time were the right ones). I also did some research when I was taking a break from cleaning–hurricanes, the 1970s, gay Hollywood during the days the studio system started crumbling–and also did some reading. I am pleased to report that The Hunting Wives is very well written and very different (already) from the series, which is kind of exciting. I also dipped into Shirley Jackson’s Life Among the Savages, and it staggers me how her writing style, that unique rhythm and voice she had, easily adapts from quiet horror to family humor.

I also started rereading Hurricane Season Hustle, the long-delayed Scotty book (why does it always seem to be Scotty books that get delayed?), and I have to confess that it’s actually not bad. The writing isn’t terrible and doesn’t need a lot of fixing, which is enormously pleasing. I simply have to write five or six chapters, the epilogue and prologue, and put some shine and sparkle on it. I am not so certain why I am always so down on my writing, especially in its sloppy early stages, because my low regard for it is not shared by most. I am working on not being hard on myself anymore–I certainly don’t need to prove anything anymore to anyone–and while I don’t think it’s wrong to think I can do better (because one always can), I need to be a bit kinder about it. Part of the reason I think I’m able to watch these Hurricane Katrina stories and documentaries now is because I am going to be dealing with, and exploring, Scotty’s memories of Katrina as the current hurricane is battering the Diderot House. I think the plot is kind of clever, and I am an award-winning author, after all. Is that confidence I feel? #madness.

We started watching Smoke on Apple Plus last night. It co-stars Taron Edgerton as an arson inspector, and Jurnee Smollett as a police detective assigned to work with him on two serial arsonist cases. It was created and written by Dennis Lehane (remember him? Mystic River? Of course you do.), and the first episode was interesting; both characters are complex and have a lot of issues, and the acting and writing is top notch. The show appears to be a slow burn (see what I did there?), and we are definitely down for watching more. We had an arsonist in the lower Garden District in the late 1990s; the Coliseum Theater was one of his victims as were several other houses in the neighborhood. Fire and water are the two elements that New Orleans dreads–how many “great fires” have there been here, anyway?–and maybe it is time for a novel about fires in New Orleans?

Then again, I’ve already done the Cabildo Fire. The Upstairs Lounge fire, too.

And on that note, I am heading into the spice mines. Have a lovely Monday, Constant Reader, and I’ll check in with you again tomorrow.

Padam Padam

And here we are at a manic Monday yet again, and shortly I will be heading into the office for yet another exciting week of the day job. Hurray and huzzah? I slept really well on Saturday night, getting up just after seven yesterday despite not going to bed until almost midnight; I found myself reading some things Saturday during the games that I shouldn’t have started–one of them being Queen Margot by Alexandre Dumas; I have the ebook–and I was also reading legends and stories about Louisiana’s past as well as Alabama’s; I have an ebook called Warrior Mountains Folklore: An Oral History by Rickey Butch Walker (which is an Alabama name if I’ve ever heard one); which isn’t necessarily about the Alabama county I’m from, but the ones directly north, including notorious Winston County, which contains the Bankhead National Forest. It also tells stories of the indigenous people of the area, and reminded me that Tuscaloosa actually is the Creek words for “black warrior,” meaning the Black Warrior River is actually the Tuscaloosa (tusca loosa); this will all go into the construction of my fictional Alabama county, which is ongoing. (And yes, the irony that one of the greatest–if not the greatest–college football programs is in a town named Black Warrior in the native tongue is hilarious.)

(It has occurred to me that I don’t necessarily have to connect all of my Alabama stories just as I don’t need to connect all my Kansas stories–which I realized while writing #shedeservedit–which was kind of freeing. I need to think in terms of multiverses rather than one single interconnected universe with my writing, don’t I? It certainly makes things easier than trying to keep the continuity and so forth going.)

Anyway, I am sure my Alabama just-for-fun research will undoubtedly pay dividends in future writing, no doubt. I also have been having ideas for more stories set there; I may give Jake’s boyfriend Beau his own story at some point; I keep going back to the legend of the Blackwood witch from antebellum/early statehood days, because the witch story is one I’ve always wanted to tell. Beau, being an archaeology major with a minor in Alabama History, is just the perfect person to tell the story of the witch I’ve always wanted to tell. But is it weird to have another vengeful spirit in the woods behind the Blackwood place, and the Civil War ruins? Or could it be tied to the lost family cemetery, still out there in the woods somewhere? As you can tell, I’ve been thinking about it lately.

I managed about a little more than twenty-five hundred words on the new Valerie yesterday, which felt great to do, really. I wanted to write some more on the Jem sequel, too, but after finishing the Valerie chapter I just felt mentally fatigued. I’m not used to writing this much in a short period of time anymore (just over an hour or so) and it’s going to take me a while to get back up to the proper writing speed I cannot maintain year-round. But it felt great to be creating again, and I do love the plot of this book. I also spent some quality time with Shawn Cosby’s marvelous All the Sinners Bleed, which is going in a direction I did not see coming and one that I am really enjoying. Shawn is such a master story-teller! I can’t wait to finish this so I can write about it–and I hope I finish it in time to read Lou Berney’s new one before I switch to October Halloween Horror Month. I think I may try out a Grady Hendrix novel for one of my horror reads and of course, I am terribly behind on Stephen King, and there are also some other lovely horror novels and collections in my piles of books to be read that could make for a fun reading month: Stephen Graham Jones, Silvia Moreno-Garcia, Paul Tremblay, Christopher Golden, Sarah Pearse, and Katrina Monroe, among so many others–I need to get back into the habit of reading for at least an hour every day. The only way to get through all the books i want to read is to make a daily time allowance for reading and stick to it.

After the abysmally disappointing Saints game, I went back to my easy chair and rather than delving back into Shawn’s book, I decided to start reading Jackson Square Jazz, the finished and published edition, to get a better handle on the story again. It’s been a long time, and I knew it had to do with a young figure skater, the Napoleon death mask, and the Cabildo fire, but not really much beyond that–although I think it’s actually the book where Scotty is in his first canonical car accident. Again, I am distant enough from it now not to immediate go into editing mode as I read it–ironic, since I need to re-edit it–and just read it. I really need to stop being so hard on myself. I know I’ve already made great strides in that direction, and I like my new positive attitude toward writing and publishing. I think analyzing why I am so hard on myself, recognizing the mentality I defaulted to when reading my work meant needing to flip a switch in my brain and going into a different mode other than editorial and doing it consciously makes a lot of difference. I was pleased rereading my short story collection, and was pretty pleased with rereading Jackson Square Jazz, particularly since it’s an early book in my canon and it’s been over twenty years since I wrote it.

(It’s kind of awe-inspiring and terrifying at the same time to realize just how long I’ve been doing this. Bill Clinton was president when I signed my first book contract.)

Well, that made me feel rather elderly.

I slept super-well last night, too. I was very tired and falling asleep in my chair, so I went to bed around nine and only woke up once, around two, and then woke up again half an hour before the alarm (as usual). Hopefully, I will not be too tired to function later today.

And on those two rather sad trombone notes, I am heading back into the spice mines. Have a lovely Monday, Constant Reader, and I will be back before you know it.

Golden Years

When I wrote Jackson Square Jazz, an important part of the plot had to do with the 1989 fire at the Cabildo. Shortly after moving to New Orleans in 1996, I’d seen a documentary about the Cabildo fire and how the New Orleans Fire Department had fought the fire–choosing to rescue as many of the artifacts and treasures inside before training the water hoses on the building. I made it a plot point because I wanted to preserve, even if in fiction, what an amazing job the NOFD had done, as well as point out how fragile and delicate our history can be. Doing the research on the fire kept putting a thought in my head–how heartbreaking would it be if St. Louis Cathedral caught fire?

After Katrina, seeing that the cathedral had survived without damage was the first semblance of hope I had after the levees failed that New Orleans would recover.

I cannot imagine how Parisians and other Frenchmen must have felt yesterday, seeing that iconic image that has stood for over eight hundred years aflame. I am not French, but it broke my heart to see the images from this horrible disaster.

One of my dreams, my bucket-list items, was to spend a day at Notre Dame, to soak in all the history and the beauty and the art. I love French history; I love France, although I’ve never been. I remember reading The Hunchback of Notre Dame for the first time. I remember all the French histories and biographies I’ve read; so much history took place in and around that beautiful, beautiful building. As I write this I remember a scene I wrote once; for a book I never wrote but one day I had this glorious image in my head and I wrote it down: the marriage of Henri of Navarre to Marguerite de Valois on the steps; because he was not a Catholic they could not wed inside. It was after their wedding that the Massacre of St. Bartholomew’s Day began; I remember reading about it in Dumas’ Queen Margot, and in assorted other historical fictions or biographies of Catherine de Medici or Henri of Navarre (who later was the first Bourbon king, Henri IV). I remember having this vivid image in my head of a lady watching the ceremony; and her impressions of it, and wrote them down. I always thought it would be an interesting historical suspense novel–the lady in question was one of the “flying squadron”; ladies trained in the erotic arts who used seduction for information in service to Catherine de Medici. I enjoyed writing about Jeanne-Charlotte de Sevigny in that scene; I’ve always liked the character and the period has always fascinated me. Perhaps someday…

I still think about that novel every once in a while.

But now, when I finally make it Paris, if I finally make it to Paris…depending on when I go, the iconic landmark, one of the major symbols of both Paris and France, won’t be the same. It will be repaired and rebuilt–it was under renovation already when the fire broke out yesterday–but will it be the view that millions have already enjoyed, admired, gasped in awe at?

And of course there’s the fear that it won’t be the same.

On the other hand, the Cabildo was rebuilt after the fire and it’s still the Cabildo, so there’s that. Future generations won’t know anything other than there was a fire and it was rebuilt–and the interior, it turns out, survived a lot more intact than anyone had originally anticipated.

It also reminds me of John Berendt’s wonderful book City of Falling Angels, about the fire that destroyed a Venetian landmark, the Opera House, and the rebuilding process.

And now, tis back to the spice mines with me this Tuesday morning.

Vive le France.

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