Monday morning and back to the office with me in a little bit. It is very dark this morning, and I kept waking up all night, too. But I feel okay this morning, if a bit tired, and that’s perfectly fine. It is the last week of October, after all; but I am going to run my Halloween Horror Month into the weekend as well. It was a nice weekend overall. I loved the rain and the coziness of it all on Friday night and most of the day Saturday and even into Sunday. Next weekend we also gain an hour of sleep–which means it will definitely be dark every night when I come home from the office. That always feels a bit oppressive, but I’ll live through it, I suppose.
LSU fired Brian Kelly yesterday, after Saturday night’s embarrassing debacle in Tiger Stadium (the students apparently were chanting “Fire Brian Kelly” in the fourth quarter), so the season is pretty much over now for sure. Interesting that we’ve fired every coach since NIck Saban left two decades ago…but Kelly also breaks the streak of three consecutive coaches winning a natty, too. I was never a fan of Coach Kelly–he never impressed me when he was at Notre Dame–and I also thought the way he fucked them over to come to LSU was kind of shitty. But he was hired and deserved a chance to prove himself, but after that first season’s win over Alabama and Jayden Daniels’ Heisman Trophy (both of which were more due to Daniels’ talents rather than anything else), he kind of has been on a bit of a skid. I have no idea who the new coach will be, or what will happen with the players, but here we are. Things are really not looking well for Louisiana football this year, with only Tulane really holding up the state’s football honor.
Who would have thunk it? Roll Wave!
I started reading Scott Carson’s Lost Man’s Lane, but after binge-reading Holukoa Road on Saturday (you can read my review of it here, if you like) my reading brain was a bit fried yesterday and I didn’t get very deep into the book. We binge-watched the rest of Alien: Earth yesterday, which was a lot of fun and very interesting. I also got the Scotty epilogue done and turned in yesterday, so for now I am going to bask in the glow of being finished with that before diving into anything else. I don’t think I have anything else promised anywhere, so I can focus on things I want to write and see what happens to them when I throw them at the wall, right?
I also watched Scream 2 yesterday, and rewatching it so soon after a Scream rewatch reminded me of how much better the first was than the second. The second was good, don’t get me wrong; but it wasn’t as ground-breaking and clever as the first, nor was it as layered. But it was clever; it just wasn’t as clever as the first. Next weekend I’ll probably watch Scream 3, the original trilogy, and will most likely watch the next three before the release of Scream 7.
Tonight after work I have to run some errands on the way home, and then I hope to get a few chores (dishes, mostly) taken care of once I get home. The weather is going to be more fall-like after today–this week has highs in the upper sixties/lows in the fifties, which won’t be a ton of fun, but I am embracing it this year. LSU also has the weekend off, so I won’t be as pressed to watch football games this weekend, and that’s also fine. I have better ways to spend my time, although I can always read while a game is on in the background. I’d like to get the Carson book finished by the end of the weekend, so I can move on to Church of Frendo, but after that I think I am going to read a new-to-me classic crime novel; maybe something by Dorothy B. Hughes or a revisiting of Charlotte Armstrong. I also want to get a lot of books taken to the library sale Saturday morning.
And on that note, I am heading into the spice mines with high hopes for another marvelous week here in New Orleans. Have a terrific day, Constant Reader, and I’ll check in with you again tomorrow morning.
Work at home Friday and was Mercury in retrograde yesterday? Is it still? My work laptop died yesterday morning when I tried signing into it after I got to work and it took most of the morning for me to get a new replacement one. So, I spent the morning without a computer–which meant outside of seeing my clients, I didn’t really have the ability to do much of anything. I finally got the new one around lunch time, but my day was already off and so was my energy, and since my routine had been disrupted, I had trouble getting back on track. Finally, I just made a list while I was eating lunch and that seemed to work, even though I still felt off all day. The replacement laptop (which is just temporary until they fix the old one) also had some issues with staying connected to my scanner, which was incredibly frustrating and resulted in my admin work taking far longer than it usually does, and I had a lot of documents to scan into patient files. The frustration was real, and I was exhausted when I got home. My brain was basically non-functional by the time I got home, and I actually fell sound asleep in my easy chair around nine-thirty. I didn’t get anything done once I was home–worn out from the endless frustration of the day–and didn’t even remember to charge my phone when I went to bed. I did manage to watch Real Housewives of Salt Lake City (which is lit this season and definitely my favorite of these shows at the moment), though, since that required little to no energy on my part. I hope to get a lot done today, both day job and Gregalicious wise; and we’re going to Costco later after I am done with work duties. (Need to make a list!)
But I slept very well last night, and woke up feeling pretty rested this morning, which is a good thing. The entire place is a disaster area, and I never managed to do anything about the dishes accumulating in the sink and now it’s of course out of control. Heavy heaving sigh. Even my desk is piled high with things that need to be put away. It feels chilly, and per the weather the high will only reach sixty degrees here today. I think I am going to walk to the gym tomorrow morning and get started back up with that again, and hopefully today will be a great clean and organize day for the house. Christmas is coming, and I am really not feeling it very much this year, to be honest, and haven’t for a few years. Paul and I decided to not do gifts again this year–we are divorcing ourselves from the capitalist holiday by refusing to spend much money observing it (we’re going to go see Babygirl in the theater on Christmas day), and I have to say I am gradually growing more radical and anti-capitalist by the day (so much for that you get conservative as you get older bullshit; I grew up as a conservative and my adult hood has been mostly about shedding that foul and utterly inhuman methodology. Profits over people, corporations are people but living breathing humans are not–I could go on and on talking about the class war in this country. I am a radicalized Paw Paw, I guess? I did have a client this week whose birth year was 2006–which was highly traumatizing, and would have been worse if I cared about being old. It was more of a shock to me that kids born after Katrina are eighteen (and older) now. Kids born the year of Katrina will be twenty next year. Twenty years, a third of my life, has passed since that time.
I am also looking forward to some good reading time. Both of my current reads (Winter Counts and White Too Long) are fascinating and well-written, and it’s quite easy to get caught up in the narrative. I’d love to finish both this weekend so I can move on to my next reads (leaning towards Alter Ego by Alex Segura or Missing White Woman by Kellye Garrett and The Exvangelicals for my non-fiction). I do want to get caught up on Donna Andrews’ two latest over the holidays, which are rapidly approaching. Soon it will be 2025 and even more insane chaos once the new “administration” is sworn in. The next four years are going to be bad, I think–signs point to yes–but I also survived the 80s and the 90s, so maybe I am a Cher/cockroach.
We started watching Black Doves the other night, and I really enjoyed the first episode. I love Ben Whishaw, and Sara Lancashire is a treasure. I am hoping we’ll be able to spend some more time with it over the course of the weekend. We also should go back to Slow Horses, which we never went back to for some reason; I think we got interrupted by something (a surgery? A funeral? Who knows?) and just never went back to it. I do also want to read the books by Mick Herron (got to love that last name), too. Ah yes, so many books to read. Heavy sigh. I have so many treasures in my TBR pile, as well as treasures from the distant past (I would love to read Anatomy of a Murder and A Summer Place and Summer of ’42 again, plus more of Margaret Millar, Daphne du Maurier, Charlotte Armstrong, and Dorothy B. Hughes) that I will probably never get through them all.
And on that note, I am going to head into the spice mines. Have a lovely Friday, Constant Reader, and I hope that I have a really productive one. I’ll be back either in the morning or later today, it’s a mystery!
Gorgeous retired Olympic and world champion ice dancer Guillaume Cizeron, who also is a model.
Wednesday and we’ve made it halfway through the week, Constant Reader. Didn’t think it was quite possible, did you, when Monday dawned so early and ugly? We expecting thunderstorms today in New Orleans–it feels cooler and damp this morning, but I don’t know when we are supposed to have said storms; probably this afternoon. I slept really well again last night–it’s been lovely getting good sleep lately. I felt a bit tired yesterday when I got home from work, and so took it a little easier on myself when I got home. I managed to get caught up on my emails (such a weird feeling) and did some writing last night. I think I’m still a bit in the post-book malaise phase of things, so writing anything isn’t easy (not that it ever is) but Paul got home late so was left to my own devices once I finished writing for the evening. I did watch some documentaries on Youtube about the Hapsburgs last night (I also discovered an English-language biography about her–Margaret of Austria–which I added to the my list of books to buy…which is almost as out of control as my TBR stack, which is now essentially the entire living room), and I read a short story in Hitchcock’s My Favorites in Suspense anthology; a dark little Charlotte Armstrong story called “The Enemy.” Armstrong was a writer I discovered as a tween, when Mom let me join the Mystery Guild Book Club; I got an omnibus by her (The Witch’s House, Mischief, The Dream Walker) which I greatly enjoyed. I rediscovered Armstrong thanks to the work of both Sarah Weinman and Jeffrey Marks, which enabled me to continue reading in her canon.
Armstrong won an Edgar for Best Novel for A Dram of Poison, a charming if dark little story of suspense; maybe the rare Edgar winner where there’s no dead body but the plot has to do with preventing an accidental death? It’s very clever, and incredibly charming, but beneath that clever charming surface it says something dark and awful about human nature and character–people who are unhappy spreading their misery to others. Armstrong was also made a Grand Master by Mystery Writers of America. Her work may seem a bit dated in the modern day–technology and society have moved on from the times she lived and wrote in–but I think it’s well worth the read. “The Enemy” is that same style of writing as Dram, a serious subject presented charmingly, and the death of a child’s dog the catalyst for an exposé of something darker and nastier…and yes, the plot also hinges on the darkness a human being is capable of creating. It’s a really clever, if slightly dated, story–and you can’t help but smile or laugh at the last line of the story. I am really enjoying these time capsules into the past, to tell you the truth. I bought a few more of these anthologies on eBay yesterday, too. It’s nice to have short story collections around for those times when my brain can’t really focus on reading an entire novel.
I have been listening to Carol Goodman’s The Drowning Tree on Audible, but I may have to break down and finish actually reading a physical copy because I can’t keep listening every day and with my memory a literal thing of the past these days, I’m not sure I remember enough of the story to pick it up again this weekend. I also picked up copies of her new novel, The Bones of the Story, along with Paul Tremblay’s new short story collection, The Beast You Are. I do like Tremblay’s writing–A Head Full of Ghosts was one of the best horror novels of the last decade, and I’ve liked everything else of his that I’ve read–and I think this may even be his second collection. I am also hoping to pull together another collection myself this year–This Town and Other Macabre Stories–but I am not sure if I will have the time. I also got the copy edits for a short story I contributed to an anthology in my inbox last night, so that has to go onto the to-do list, and I still have page proofs to get through. But for the most part, it seems as though I have a guilt-free free weekend, which one can never truly go wrong with, either. I’ll have some errands to run, of course–I always have errands to run–but there’s no stress or pressure on me either, which is kind of nice. I think maybe that’s the reason I’ve been sleeping so well this week? No pressure and my schedule has kind of normalized, gotten back to normal, settled back into the routine my body is used to, perhaps?
Yes, that makes total sense to me.
I also have ideas and thoughts pinging around in my head. I’m itching to get back to the works I have in progress; I want to get a strong first draft of two different novels finished before I leave for Bouchercon next (!!!) month. I actually, finally, made a to-do list yesterday; I am hoping that I can get my life back on track the way it was before the pandemic and the madness of the last few years. That doesn’t mean that my blood pressure won’t continue to go up predicated on the constant assaults on everyone who’s not a cisgender straight man from the demons on the right–which is part of the reason my interest in the Civil War and the 1850’s, that terrible lead-up to the split, has been heightened these last few months. I do see a lot of similarities in the split between conservative v. progressive today, which was predicated along the lines of abolitionist/pro-human trafficking back then. One of the books my father gave me to read was called Southerners in Blue, which was a novelization of the true story (albeit poorly written) of a Union sympathizer and others like him in Winston County, Alabama. (If you’re not familiar with Winston County, the easiest way to explain it is this county did not vote for secession and essentially stated that if Alabama had the right to secede from the Union, the county had the right to secede from Alabama. They did not secede from Alabama, just said they had the right to predicated on the secession arguments being presented, but have gone down in Alabama history and lore as having actually seceded even though they most certainly did not) Basically, in some of the northern counties of Alabama there was basically a second civil war, between the “secesh” and the “Unionist” supporters, and the mountains of north Alabama were filled with deserters from the Confederate Army, This was also novelized into a book called Tories of the Hills by Wesley Sylvester Thompson, which is incredibly rare (my uncle has a copy, which my aunt won’t let be removed from her house–wise, as I would totally steal it). I had read another book also while I was up there, about the Kansas-Missouri border war–which had a decided “secesh” slant to it, of course, while complaining that all previous histories were “unsympathetic to the Missouri slave-owner point of view”. I’m sure he had a point, but simply because there are two sides to every story doesn’t mean each side deserves to be heard, or that each side’s opinion has equal weight. It did spark my interest, though, and I really think there’s a book in this little-known history of north Alabama. Again, it would be difficult to write–lots of potential landmines there–but it’s also, as I said, not very well known and with today’s tribalism mentality–not to mention how loud the Lost Cause fanatics are–it’s hard to wrap one’s mind around the notion that the South wasn’t monolithic in its thinking.
Because no group of people are, really, which is why I don’t like being asked for a gay perspective on anything; I can only speak for myself.
But while I continue to research this aspect of history and try to figure out a way to get a novel out of it, I am going to map out two others. One is already in progress, and the other is a New Orleans ghost story I’ve been wanting to write for quite some time now. The trick is to make it different from every other ghost story I’ve already written. Good luck with that, Mr. Repetitive!
Heavy heaving sigh.
And on that note, I am heading into the spice mines. Have a great Wednesday, Constant Reader, and I will check in with you again later.
I did read some short stories this weekend from the Alfred Hitchcock Presents anthologies I’ve gotten from eBay over the last month or so, and they’ve been wonderfully delightful and deliciously wicked. They also remind me of where I got the idea that short stories should always have a wry, slightly ironic but gasp-inducing twist at the end. I remember vaguely watching Alfred Hitchcock Presents (we were always a family who were fans of Hitchcock) and, while I was too young to remember The Twilight Zone, I do remember Night Gallery. I am also loving reading stories by masters of crime fiction that I’ve not read before; in one of the anthologies the next story up is by the delightful Charlotte Armstrong. I just read one by Anthony Boucher (for whom Bouchercon was named) called “They Bite” that was incredibly creepy; in another one of the anthologies the next story is by Roald Dahl. I would love for us to go back to the wonderful world that existed back in those days, when the short story was a much more valued art form than it is today and there were all kinds of markets for them. Heavy heaving sigh.
So, I did pull out that story the copy-editor said was “powerful,” and as I read it my horror grew, until by the time I finished it I had noted so many errors and transition problems that I thought that cannot be the version I turned in and was in thorough panic mode when I remembered to check the laptop and sure enough, there it was. I did reread the story, did spot some mistakes, but the revision I did before turning it in was clearly the right thing to do, as the story was significantly better and made more sense and was actually, pretty good. It touched on themes I seem to keep returning to, over and over again, but what can you do? I cannot control my creativity that strongly, you know; I write the stories as they come to me. I do worry that I am repeating myself though–how many hangover scenes have I written over the years (which is hilarious, because I never really had hangovers the way other people have always talked about them)?
We started watching a new crime show that seemed to have a lot of potential, but there were a couple of annoying characters in the forefront of the show that undermined it for me, so we gave up after a couple of episodes. We did watch the final episode of The Ashley Madison Affair, which was pretty interesting to me. First of all, if anything, it emphasized the fact that not everyone is content with monogamy–and since we idealize monogamy and the nuclear family in this present day society (unrealistically, I might add), the concept of open and honest conversations about sexuality and monogamy and so forth are made very difficult to have. Women are trained from childhood to see cheating as the worst possible sin of all time, as well as to try to inhibit and control their sexuality as much as possible, denying themselves the same freedom to explore what they like and enjoy while also determining what they don’t like and don’t enjoy the way single man are often allowed. Dorothy Allison wrote very strongly about how societal views and beliefs and mores about female sexuality prohibited women from becoming their full selves; there’s always someone just raring to slut-shame a woman, isn’t there? A former friend of mine who claimed herself to be an ardent feminist (she became a TERF, of course) and that women had every right to be as sexually liberated as men would then turn around and slut-shame every female celebrity that ever came up for discussion. All models were really “escorts,” and every successful woman in entertainment slept her way to the top.
That’s an interesting feminist take, isn’t it?
We also started watching a gay teen movie, and turned it off within five minutes. It was terrible. We watched something else after that, but i honestly don’t remember what it was, to tell you the horrible truth. I hate this memory nonsense, seriously.
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 (or later, whatever the case may be).
The first “Gothic” novel I read was Victoria Holt’s The Secret Woman (technically, it was Mary Stewart’s The Ivy Tree, but I don’t really think of Stewart as a Gothic writer–which is a subject for another time), and I fell in love with them. These were the books, usually from Fawcett Crest in mass market paperback, that became famous for the “young woman running away from a spooky house with a light in the window while wearing a long nightgown and having really long hair” covers. Sometimes those covers didn’t belong on the books that had them (Charlotte Armstrong didn’t write Gothics, for one example), but inevitably, you really couldn’t go wrong picking up a book with that kind of cover. My favorites were of course Mary Stewart, Phyllis A. Whitney, and Victoria Holt; I devoured their books, and also enjoyed Susan Howatch, Dorothy Eden, and any number of others. I miss those books, even if sometimes the heroines were incredibly passive to the point where I wanted to shake some self-esteem into them…and have often bemoaned their disappearance from the paperback shelves.
But there are modern Gothics being published–Carol Goodman is a QUEEN of the modern Gothic–and I’ve turned my hand to them from time to time myself (Timothy, The Orion Mask, Bury Me in Shadows) and would like to do more.
So, you can imagine how delighted I was to read (listen) to The Death of Mrs. Westaway.
The girl leaned, rather than walked, into the wind, clutching the damp package of fish and chips grimly under one arm even as the gale plucked at the paper, trying to unravel the parcel and send the contents skittering away down the seafront for the seagulls to claim.
As she crossed the road her hand closed over the crumpled note in her pocket, and she glanced over her shoulder, checking the long dark stretch of pavement behind her for a shadowy figure, but there was no one there. No one she could see, anyway.
It was rare for the seafront to be completely deserted. The bars and clubs were open long into the night, spilling drunk locals and tourists onto the pebbled beach right through until dawn. But tonight, even the most hardened partygoers had decided against venturing out, and now, at 9:55 p.m. on a wet Tuesday, Hal had the promenade to herself, the flashing lights of the pier the only sign of life, apart from the gulls wheeling and crying over the dark restless waters of the channel.
I had heard somewhere that this book had echoes of potentially being a Rebecca homage (hello, Timothy!) so of course I was interested. Ware first exploded on the mystery scene with her The Woman in Cabin 10, which I haven’t read (it’s buried in the TBR pile somewhere) and I had acquired some of her others titles in the years since her debut with In a Dark, Dark Wood (which I also have on hand) and I decided, when picking out audiobooks to listen to on the drive, thought, “Hey, isn’t it about time you checked out Ruth Ware? Overdue, in fact? So I downloaded The Death of Mrs. Westaway and started listening once I pulled away from the curb last Thursday.
Wow.
The main character is Harriet Westaway, who goes by Hal. Hal is poor–very poor. She makes a subsistence-level living by reading tarot cards in a booth on the pier in a seaside resort, and it’s the off-season, where her living is even lower. The book opens with her walking home from a night’s work, trying to figure out how she is going to pay her bills–and which ones can wait, which need immediate attention–and she also owes money to a loanshark, who is getting more threatening with every passing day. Out of the blue she receives a letter from an attorney letting her know she was named in her grandmother’s will, and an invitation to the funeral. Confused–Hal knows that wasn’t her grandmother’s name, and verifies the information by checking her mother’s birth certificate (her mother was killed in a hit-and-run accident when she was a senior in high school–the British equivalent, at any rate–and as such never finished school); it’s a mistake, but…maybe she can fake her way into a bit of an inheritance. She is desperate, after all, and what can it hurt to get away for a little while? And so Hal sets out for the Cornish estate Trepassen–the Westaway fortune has dwindled over the years, and the house is in ill repair, but Hal is very startled after the funeral to discover that her “grandmother” has left everything to her, which now has her on the horns of a dilemma. She knows a mistake has been made about her identity, but doesn’t know how to get out of the pickle she’s now in.
Trepassen reminded me in ways of Manderly, and the Rebecca parallels are there, but this is not a simple homage. Mrs. Warren, the housekeeper, was devoted to the late Mrs. Westaway (whose children despised her) and is perfectly awful to poor Hal. The Westaway family welcomes Hal as the long-last daughter of their long-lost sister Maud, which only adds to her guilt about the deception she is pulling on them. Hal is mousy, like the second Mrs. deWinter, and there were times I wanted to shake her into standing up for herself a bit more…but on the other hand, it kind of fits into the situation she’s in–how do you stand up for yourself when you are literally lying to everyone? There are a lot of family mysteries to explore and unravel. Hal’s arrival at Trepassen starts those threads unraveling, and like any true Gothic heroine, soon her life is in danger…
I enjoyed this book tremendously. It reminded me strongly of Victoria Holt and Phyllis Whitney, and I will certainly be reading more of Ruth Ware going forward.
There is no question that Agatha Christie is one of the giants (if not the giant) of crime fiction.
Agatha Christie was one of my gateways to adult crime fiction (along with Charlotte Armstrong, Phyllis A. Whitney, and Victoria Holt); if I remember correctly the first book of hers I bought was Witness for the Prosecution (which I didn’t know was a short story collection) and the first novel of hers I read was Murder in the Calais Coach (best known as Murder on the Orient Express; the former was a short-lived American title for the book, and frankly, isn’t an improvement; why make the title about something no one would know what is was? Everyone knew the Orient Express). I eventually read everything she wrote, with a few exceptions (I still haven’t read Murder in Three Acts or Death in the Air) but the first Miss Marple novel I read was A Caribbean Mystery. I always preferred Miss Marple to Poirot, but I kind of want to give a Poirot or two a reread; Donna Andrews made a very clever observation about him on one of my social media posts which provides another lens for me to read through.
I found a hardcover copy of A Caribbean Mystery somewhere since we moved into the Lost Apartment; I’m not sure where. I certainly don’t remember buying it on eBay (the only other Christie I have in hardcover, Halloween Party, is missing its dust jacket, and I think I got it at a yard sale? But wait! It’s a Poirot! And has Ariadne Oliver, Christie’s stand-in! Yes, that’s a reread for the new lens for Poirot! And now that that’s sorted…), so there’s no telling where it came from. I don’t know why it took me so long to reread it–it’s actually on the short side–but it did take me a while. Maybe because there was no urgency because I remembered who the killer was?
“Take all this business about Kenya,” said Major Palgrave. “Lots of chaps gabbing away who know nothing about the place! Now I spent fourteen years of my life there. Some of the best years of my life, too–“
Old Miss Marple inclined her head.
It was a gentle gesture of courtesy. While Major Palgrave proceeded with the somewhat uninteresting recollections of a lifetime, Miss Marple peacefully pursued her own thoughts. It was a routine with which she was well acquainted. The locale varied. In the past, it had been predominantly India. Majors, colonels, lieutenant-generals–and a familiar series of words: Simla. Bearers. Tigers. Chota Hazri–Tiffin. Khitmagars, and so on. With Major Palgrave the terms were slightly different. Safari. Kikuyu. Elephants. Swahili. But the pattern was essentially the same. An elderly man who needed a listener so that he could, in memory, relive days in which he had been happy Days when his back had been straight, his eyesight keen, his hearing acute. Some of these talkers had been handsome soldierly old boys, some again had been regrettably unattractive; and Major Palgrave, purple of face, with a glass eye, and the general appearance of a stuffed frog, belonged in the latter category.
Miss Marple has bestowed on all of them the same gentle charity. She had sat attentively, inclingin her head from time to time in gentle agreement, thinking her own thoughts and enjoying what there was to enjoy, in this case the deep blue of a Caribbean sea.
I decided to reread this book for several reasons. First, I am reading a lot of “cozy” mysteries (mysteries with amateur sleuths as the main crime-solver) because I am writing one myself; second, because I’ve been wanting to revisit Christie on a smaller scale (there’s no way I could reread her entire canon again); and third, because I read a piece recently somewhere (Crime Reads, perhaps?) about the enduring legacy of Christie despite some problematic aspects to some of the books (I was well aware of the classism and anti-Semitism, and VERY WELL AWARE of the various problematic title changes for And Then There Were None over the years), and this one was mentioned. I remembered the book, I remembered the story; I remembered that this was the book where Miss Marple met Mr. Rafiel and she became, in some ways, Nemesis to the two of them (one of the later Marples was, in fact, Nemesis, and Mr. Rafiel sent her a murder to solve from beyond the grave); but I wasn’t so sure I remembered why precisely this book was problematic, could be see that way. So, I took it down from the shelves, and started reading.
The premise of the book is this: Miss Marple had a rough winter, having contracted pneumonia, and her nephew, bestselling novelist Raymond West, has decided to send his beloved elderly aunt to a warmer climate to recuperate–St. Honoré, to be exact, in the Caribbean, or the West Indies–at the Golden Palm Hotel resort. (St. Honoré is, of course, fictional; I may use it if I ever need a fictional Caribbean setting) As she sits in the warm sun, knitting and observing the people around her–she is always watching–and half-listening to the pompous bore rattling on to his captive audience (this scene, and her thoughts about Major Palgrave being of a type who really doesn’t need anyone to really pay attention, but to just be in hearing range with the proper noises being made when necessary, is quite insightful and brilliant; haven’t we all been there in that situation?), when he asks her if she wants to see the picture of a murderer? Since she isn’t really listening, she assents and continues to observe and watch everyone around her, and as he is reaching into his wallet to show her a picture of said murderer, he stops, turns quite purple, shoves the photo back into his wallet and loudly changes the subject. This does catch her attention, and she turns around to see what he saw–but doesn’t see anything or anyone that could explain this behavior change. He then makes excuses and leaves.
And of course, he dies that night–and this incident nags at Miss Marple. His death is explained away by him having high blood pressure, and having drank too much on top of his medication; but she isn’t so sure. And then she makes up a lie about the photograph, which she tells the doctor, and it turns out the photograph is missing.
Obviously, the Major was murdered, and did he really have high blood pressure, or is that merely gossip? As Miss Marple observes, “it’s very easy to get a rumor about, and people will just repeat it. There’s never any first-hand knowledge; it always A heard it from B who heard it from C and no one can really pinpoint where the story started.”
It’s a good story, with lots of suspects and suspicious behavior and trying to sort rumor from truth, but two more people wind up dead–a very common theme in Christie is a murderer having to kill others to cover up their original crime–before Miss Marple remembers something and figures out not only who the killer is, but who their actual target was from the very beginning.
And yes, there’s some serious problematic views of the islanders from the British paternalistic colonialist point of view. But Christie herself never says anything problematic–it always comes from the mouth of one of her characters, who, given the time period, would inevitably think that way–side comments about how many of the islanders are in committed relationships without benefit of clergy; etc. etc. etc.
So, I would say it held up about 95% on the reread; yes, there’s some problematic stuff that might be jarring for someone to read now for the first time and would probably not be allowed past the editorial process today–and excising it wouldn’t harm the book in the least.
What a lovely night’s sleep I had last night. I’m not sure what’s been up lately, but my sleep hasn’t been as good as it could be (or should be) but yesterday I got my order of pillow spray from This Works (I’ve used it before; my friend Lauren recommended it to me years ago. It’s what they give the first class passengers on British Airways flights to spray on their pillows to help them sleep during a flight; it does work…it’s just not inexpensive. I ordered two bottles with my stimulus check and they arrived yesterday–and last night I slept deeply, restfully, and well–and through the night.) I woke up at six–thanks, early mornings–but was able to go back to sleep for a few more hours. This is a very good thing, as I have–outside of some errands to run this morning–to spend the entire day working on my book–the same with tomorrow. It’s due on Thursday–but I may take the next weekend to go over it one more time.
I finished reading Gore Vidal’s Lincoln yesterday; it’s been quite a voyage. I’m not sure, frankly, how long it’s taken me to read it–I think I started it sometime last year–but I was reading a few pages a day rather than curling up with it. I love the way Vidal writes–he uses a weirdly distant, almost but not quite omniscient third person point of view–and the characters he follows are interesting choices. I’ve read another one of his chain of books Narratives of Empire (Empire) and rather enjoyed it; I’ve enjoyed most of Vidal’s work that I’ve read (Julian the Apostate is a particular favorite) and now I suppose will seek out others in the series; 1876 sounds kind of appealing, if for no other reason that it is a little-known but incredibly important year in American history. I’ll do an entry about Lincoln at some point, but I did really enjoy this, and do recommend it.
It’s very weird feeling so rested this morning–it makes me realize all those other mornings when I thought I was actually rested, well, I was wrong. It was just an improvement over insomnia, I guess.
It’s sort of gray outside again today–my windows are covered in condensation, which means it’s very definitely humid outside this morning. I am going to drop off two boxes of books at the library for their sale this morning and I need to stop at Whole Foos–I’ve been carrying a gift card valued at $25 in my wallet for nearly two years at this point, and as horrific as the Whole Foods on Magazine will be on a Saturday with all the uptown Karens out with their yoga pants or tennis skirts with a latté in hand will inevitably prove to be, I may as well make use of the extra trip uptown. I made groceries yesterday already, so I am just going to check out their berry situation as well as see if they have blackened catfish at the prepared food bar–it’s been a long time since I’ve had that, and Whole Foods’ is pretty good–and then head home to hibernate. Tomorrow all I have to do is work on the book and go to the gym–I am also doing some cleaning around the house, when I need a break and to clear my head–and hopefully, will be able to make some great progress on the book. We shall see, shan’t we?
The World Figure Skating championships are also currently going on in Stockholm–spoiler! I just checked results and Nathan Chen made a comeback from third place in the short to win the free skate by enough points to win the gold medal by a decisive margin–he hasn’t lost since the Olympics in 2018–which makes him the favorite for the Olympics next year. Pretty cool. We may win two medals in the ice dance, which finishes later–and the ladies finished fourth and ninth, so we can send three women to the Olympics next year as well. Our best pairs team finished seventh–not bad, since they’ve only been skating together for less than a year, and they are probably the best pairs team we’ve had in decades; they certainly have the potential to be at any rate. I just wish we could get another ladies’ champion again….particularly when you take into consideration we won two medals (gold and bronze) in 1992; a silver in 1994; gold and silver in 1998, and gold and bronze in 2002 (also a silver in 2006; the last time an American woman won an Olympic medal in figure skating).
The Tennessee Williams Festival also comes to a close this weekend, and I will shortly have my marriage back. Paul was actually home last night in time for me to make dinner–the Festival is virtual, so he doesn’t have to live at the Monteleone this weekend and can actually come home and watch things as they air on his computer–so we actually had dinner together for the first time since Valentine’s Day, really; and even that dinner together was an outlier. I’ve barely seen him for several months now, and perhaps that’s part of the reason I slept so well last night; because it was also a return to some semblance of what passes for normal around here; we ate dinner together and watched the rhythm dance competition.
It was kind of nice, actually.
I also reas Sara Paretsky’s introduction to a new edition of Dorothy B. Hughes’ Ride the Pink Horse. Hughes is one of the great crime writers of the past, probably best known for her In a Lonely Place, which is certainly stellar; but I’ve never been disappointed by a Hughes novel, just as I never have been with anything written by her contemporaries Charlotte Armstrong and Margaret Millar. I got a cheap ebook edition of Dorothy Gilman’s The Unexpected Mrs. Pollifax, which I remember enjoying tremendously–I loved the early books in the series, but in one of them Gilman gave her a love interest whom she also married, and I felt the books weren’t really the same after that and I stopped reading them. I reread the first two pages of the book last night and was instantly charmed, just as I had been decades ago when I read it for the first time (I honestly don’t know why I picked up the first one in the first place), but the idea of the CIA hiring a widowed grandmother as a courier because no one would suspect the nice elderly American lady always has entertained me tremendously. It also occurred to me, as I set my iPad aside to come make dinner, that I am currently reading John LeCarré’s The Russia House..another novel of spies and international intrigue, and that I should perhaps read the two books back to back, comparing and contrasting them; spy thrillers coming from such vastly different perspectives…and voices.
Ah, my coffee tastes marvelous this morning. My brain is shaking off the vestigial fog from the sleep and my body is waking up. I am going to take this delicious cup of coffee with me to my easy chair, where I shall spend the next hour reading LeCarré, before doing the dishes and then venturing out to get my errands completed. Have a lovely Saturday, Constant Reader, and I will talk to you again tomorrow.
Not only do I write two private eye series, erotica, and the occasional stand alone, I also, sometimes, write what’s classified as young adult fiction. I have not published anything that could remotely be considered y/a in quite a while, and therein lies a tale (I think the last book I published that could be considered “young adult” was Dark Tide; I could be wrong. I no longer remember when and in what order my non-series books came out).
To be clear, the fact that I even call those books “y/a” even though I don’t really think of them as young adult fiction is a marketing thing, really; in my mind, they’re simply novels I wrote about teenagers. I started writing about teenagers when I actually was one; the stories I wrote in high school weren’t bad, for a teenager, and were the first indication–from my fellow classmates, and my English teacher–that I could seriously become a published writer if I chose to try to do so; the utter lack of seriousness my writing aspirations received from my family was kind of soul-crushing. But I always wanted to write about teenagers, from the very beginnings; I wanted to do my own Nancy Drew/Hardy Boys style series, and then progressed to other stories.
I progressed as a reader pretty quickly when I was growing up; I went from the series books, like the Hardy Boys and Nancy Drew, and the Scholastic Book Club mysteries, to Agatha Christie, Charlotte Armstrong, and Ellery Queen when I was around eleven or twelve, if not younger; I know I read both Gone with the Wind and Antonia Fraser’s Mary Queen of Scots when I was ten. The few books I read that were considered “children’s books” (there was no such thing as young adult fiction then) were books like The Outsiders and The Cat Ate My Gymsuit and I did enjoy them; I just didn’t think of them as either being particularly authentic or realistic. Nor did they have any bearing on my life, or the lives of my friends–I viewed them like youth-oriented television shows like The Brady Bunch, existing in some bizarre alternate universe that has no basis in actual reality or what those of us who were that age were actually experiencing. I always thought there was something missing–complicated and authentic books about the lives of real teenagers and the real issues they faced everyday, without getting into the insanity of the preachy-teachy “issue” books that usually wound up as ABC After-school Specials, which I loathed.
Not all “issue books” were bad, in all fairness; some, like Lisa Bright and Dark, about a girl struggling with mental illness whose parents refused to face their daughter’s reality, so her friends tried to help her by serving as amateur psychologists, and I Never Promised You a Rose Garden, about a teenaged girl in a mental hospital dealing with her illness were actually quite good. But I loved books like The Cheerleader, about a poor girl in a small New England town with ambitions and dreams that far exceeded those of most of her friends…dealing with issues of popularity, sex, and first love. David Marlow’s Yearbook was also a favorite, and while not marketed to kids, was about high school, but had some themes and plot-lines considered far too heavy for teens to digest in the 1970’s. You can also see it in the pap that was considered movies for teenagers; G-rated bubble-gum like The Computer Wore Tennis Shoes, and inevitably came from Disney and starred Kurt Russell. (These movies are an interesting time capsule; I did try to watch one of them recently on Disney Plus and didn’t last three minutes in that squeaky clean, sex-free college environment.)
(Also, I would like to point out at this time there were terrific books being published in the 1970’s for teens that dealt with major issues and were groundbreaking; Sandra Scoppetone was writing about queer teens back then, and there were some others doing terrific work at the time–I just wasn’t aware of those books until much later.)
My first three young adult novels–Sorceress, Sleeping Angel, Sara–were written as first drafts in the early 1990’s, put in a drawer, and forgotten about for nearly twenty years. Sorceress had no queer content in it at all; it was my version of the truly popular trope of romantic/domestic suspense where an orphaned girl goes to live in a spooky mansion far away from her old life (Jane Eyre, Rebecca, almost everything written by Victoria Holt), and slowly becomes aware that everything in the house isn’t as it seems. It was a lot of fun to write–I loved those books and I loved putting a modern spin on them. Sleeping Angel’s first draft was never completed, and the published version is vastly different than what the original first draft contained; there are still some vestiges of the original plot there in the book that are never truly explained, and by the time I realized, after many drafts, that I hadn’t removed those vestiges from the book it was too late to do anything about it other than hope no one noticed. The book did well, won an award or two, and is still a favorite of my readers, according to what I see on social media. One of the things I added to the story was a queer subplot about bullying, which is what I think readers truly responded to, and I also feel like adding that to the story in addition to the other changes I made to it made it a stronger book. Sara was always intended to have gay characters and a gay plot; I originally started writing it as a novel for adults and realized, over the course of writing it, that actually the teenage story was the most interesting part and I could deal with some issues there if I switched the focus of the book to the teenagers. One thing that changed from the 1991 first draft to the draft that was published is that the character I originally had being bullied for being gay, even though he wasn’t (another character, one of the biggest bullies, actually was), was actually not only gay but had come out, and so the book also talked about the reverberations of a popular football coming out, and what impact that had on the school social structure and hierarchy.
Sara, incidentally, is one of my lowest selling titles–which also kind of breaks my heart a little bit.
Since those three, there have been others I’ve written–Lake Thirteen, Dark Tide–and I’ve also dabbled in what is called “new adult fiction”–books about college-age or just out of college-age characters–this is where The Orion Mask and Timothy and the current one I’m working on, Bury Me in Shadows, fall on the marketing spectrum.
One of the questions I had to deal with in writing young adult novels with queer content was the question of sex. I had already been through being banned in Virginia because I had written gay erotica (a really long story that I revisited recently with Brad Shreve on his podcast; I really do need to write in depth about the entire experience); what would happen if ‘notorious gay porn writer’ Greg Herren began writing fiction specifically aimed at teenagers? But the truly interesting thing about being used as a political pawn by the right-wing fanatics in the power games they play is that once they’ve made use of you, they forget about you and move on. My young adult fiction was released without a single complaint, protest, or any of the sturm und drang that my speaking at a high school to a group of queer and queer-supportive youth created scant years earlier.
Interesting, isn’t it?
And yet…there is no sex in any of those books. None. I don’t remember my gay teens even getting a chaste kiss, let alone a sex life, or fantasies, or a boyfriend.
And what about desire?
A couple of years ago someone tagged me on Facebook on an article about just that very subject; that was when I started writing this post (three yeara ago, looks like) but I never finished writing this until this morning.
I know, it’s a lot of information to process, but it’s something we should all be thinking about, particularly as the calls for diversity in publishing and popular culture continue. Sex is, quite obviously, a touchy subject when it comes to young adult fiction, but when it comes to questions of sexuality and being a sexual minority, what is too much and what is not enough? Even depictions of straight sexuality is frowned on and controversial when it comes to young adult fiction. (For the record, that is also considered the case for crime fiction–no explicit sex scenes–or at least so I was told when I was first getting started; doubly ironic that my mystery series were what the right-wing Virginian fanatics considered porn–I really do need to write about that.)
I also have noticed the elitism evident in hashtags like #ownvoices and #weneeddiversevoices that have come and gone and return periodically on Twitter; those actively involved in promoting those tags, when it comes to queer books, make it abundantly clear they only care about those published by the Big Five in New York–which is a good target, I agree, and they do need to be doing better when it comes to diversity and “own voices” work–but this focus also ignores the small presses, particularly the queer ones, who have been doing this work all along and making sure queer books were still being published for all ages and getting out there and made available to those who want and need them. I am absolutely delighted to see queer books by queers being published by the Big 5, and young adult work in particular…and yet…there are some serious issues still with the Big 5–and with what is called ” young adult Twitter”.
I do find it interesting to see who they decide are the “cool kids” and who they banish to the outer tables with the freaks and geeks.
It’s part of the reason I don’t engage with young adult twitter, to be honest. I really have no desire to return to the high school cafeteria at this point in my life.
And I’ll write about teenagers whenever there’s a story I want to tell involving teenagers–which currently is the Kansas book; I turned my protagonist in Bury Me in Shadows into a college student because it actually works better.
And on that note, tis back to the spice mines with me. (And huzzah for finally finishing this post!)
Do days and dates mean anything anymore? It’s hard for me to keep track, that’s for certain. And from what I gather, it’s not just me–everyone is having difficulty keeping track. I missed making a credit card payment this month because I didn’t put it on my Google calendar with an alert–the calendar alerts have literally been saving my ass since this whole thing started–and thank God for them, you know? They pop up on my computer, phone and iPad, so it’s unlikely that I will miss them, but stuff has to literally be on the calendar for me to get an alert, so that’s on me. It’s about time for me to start loading all the bills into the May calendar–perhaps that will be a chore for this weekend.
After all the pleasure I’ve had rereading Mary Stewart and Elizabeth Peters, I am thinking that I should keep the Reread Project going and reread something else that I loved and haven’t read in a long time. What that might be, I don’t know–there are so many books loaded into my Kindle app it’s terribly frightening–but I am also curious as to whether I’ll enjoy reading something new on there. I have some classic crime novels loaded in there–Charlotte Armstrong, Ellery Queen, Dorothy Salisbury Davis, Mary Roberts Rinehart–as well as Ethel Lina White’s novel (blanking on the name) which was filmed as The Spiral Staircase, which is a great classic suspense story starring Dorothy McGuire (I think) that doesn’t get near enough credit or recognition. Then again, I haven’t seen it since I was a child, so who knows? Perhaps it doesn’t hold up. I just remember that the main character, the heroine, was either deaf or mute or both. And yes, the more I think about it, the more I think that should be my next read.
On the other hand, Scott Heim’s Mysterious Skin is just sitting there, begging for a reread. I was thinking more about the book again last night–about how truly clever it was, and possibly about how it could be considered, perhaps, a crime novel; which of course made me want to read it again all the more.
Yesterday I was very tired when i got home; I had to get up early and so screenings at our other campus, and then come back to the other for the rest of the day. I slept better last night than I have previous nights of the week–although I did wake up a few times–and I really do need to get back to stretching and exercising here at home every morning. It helps with being tired, and it certainly helps me sleep better at night. I’ve lost seven pounds since the quarantine started–apparently every one else has gained weight?–and so, for the first time since around 2010 or 2011, I weigh less than 210, which was a plateau I was beginning to think I was too old to break through. And now I have, which means that getting down to my goal weight of 200 is possible. I’m not sure, with the muscle weight that I have now, that going below 200 is realistic; but we’ll cross that bridge when we get to it. I never thought I was going to get below 210 ever again, and here I am.
We continue to watch Murder is My Life with Lucy Lawless on Acorn, and I highly recommend it. Lawless looks amazing–those eyes!–and of course, she’s always been an incredibly talented actress–more so than she’s ever been given credit for (she deserved an Emmy for Spartacus) and the structure of the story around her and her character is really quite good. When I get home from the office today, I’m going to finally sign into the CBS All Access app on Apple TV I’ve been paying for, so I can start watching not only Picard but Jordan Peele’s The Twilight Zone reboot.
This weekend, I’ll need to run some errands–grocery store for a bit of odds and ends–and I am mostly going to spend the weekend relaxing, cleaning, organizing, and I need to polish a pair of short stories and finish the first draft of my Sherlock story, so I can revise and rewrite accordingly before turning it in at the end of the month. I’m also going to go back to the Secret Project, which I’d like to finish, along with these stories, by the end of the month. Then I can go spend May finishing the final draft of Bury Me in Shadows–I finally had the breakthrough on the story I was looking for–and then once that’s done, I can spend June and/or July doing a final of the Kansas book, and then–you guessed it–it’s time to tackle Chlorine.
Pretty cool, huh? I also want to start brainstorming on the next Scotty book, too. SO much writing to do, so little time….
And so I must return to the depths of the spice mines. Have a lovely Friday, Constant Reader.
The weather took a turn last evening; sometime after the sun settled in the western sky a storm blew in, with high winds and a lot of rain and a significant temperature drop as well. It was quite a shock when I went to get in the car after work last night; I’d worn a polo style shirt to work–even had to use the air conditioning in the car (IN EARLY MARCH), and so was freezing and shivering by the time I walked across the lot to my car. It’s gray and dreary outside right now as well, but I don’t think it’s very cold–it’s certainly not noticeably cold in the Lost Apartment, which means its undoubtedly warmer outside.
I had a lot of errands and things to do yesterday before heading into the office for my half-day; and one of those errands was, of course, going to the gym. Now that I am adding weight every week, it’s getting to be more work and more strain on my muscles, but it’s a gradual thing and quite nice to be working hard again. I don’t really have any goal as far as appearance goes–which was what my workouts were always predicated on before; I initially started working out to get in better shape and improve my health, but vanity soon began playing a part in it as well. I think after 2000 was when I started focusing on peaking my body at Southern Decadence and then again at Mardi Gras; Id always clean up my eating for a few months before and also do more, and more intensive, cardio in those months so that I’d look my best for those occasions. Decadence and Mardi Gras actually make the most sense for me to use as goals for my workouts, but I don’t know if I want to even think that way again. I don’t know that vanity is going to be enough of a motivator this time around…maybe it will eventually come back into play again, but it hasn’t reared its ugly head yet. Anyway, with the extra weight now the workouts are harder and I am feeling them a lot more–especially the legs. But I am not sore this morning–I’ve not woken up sore the morning after a workout since I got back to it–but my muscles are certainly tired afterwards, and for the rest of the day. But this morning I woke up feeling somewhat rested–there’s some tightness in the hip flexors, but that’s to be expected.
But it feels so damned good to be working out again!
Tomorrow, though, I think I’m going to wait until after work to go to the gym. It’s hard to go in the morning and then go to the office, even on a half-day, so yeah, I think it’s going to be better to go after work. I”m pretty pleased with myself–I’ve resisted the temptation to skip every single time–even to the point where I don’t even think about skipping, which is pretty awesome. I’ve only missed my Wednesday workout on Ash Wednesday, and that was primarily because the gym didn’t open until noon that day so I couldn’t go.
I did get sort of caught up on my emails yesterday morning, but of course this morning they are out of control again, which is certainly Sisyphean, isn’t it? I’m not quite awake yet this morning, so I probably won’t be able to make any progress on them until at least after I finish my second cup of coffee this morning. I also just went out to feed the outdoor kitties, and it’s brisk out there; I definitely need my skull cap today.
Yay. But in fairness, the warmer weather earlier this week was definitely an aberration.
I wrote another few sentences last night on my Sherlock tale, which was something–given how tired I was last night when I got home from work–so I am counting that as a win. Progress has been ridiculously slow on this story, but I am hoping to get through it this weekend, as well as starting to revise two other stories (I remembered there’s another anthology with a due date at the end of the month); i really need to make a to-do list this morning, and get back to getting organized as well as stay there once I have achieved that glorious state. I have too many things going on at the same time now for me to allow myself to remain as scattered as I’ve been; I was beginning to feel like I had a handle on everything and then of course it was Carnival and I’ve been treading water ever since. I always feel like there’s something I’m forgetting, and then it turns out that of course, there was indeed something I was forgetting.
In fact, yesterday I was talking to a client about the parade deaths this year, and it popped into my head that I remembered how–everything is material, remember–those tragedies could work in a short story I already had in progress, so I of course made a note and perhaps–just perhaps–I need to go through my notebook and my journal and start tracking the things I need to get done better. I remember I used to make a monthly to-do list, as a macro, and then use that to make my weekly to-do list, and then would make a daily one every morning. Extreme? Perhaps, but it worked and I was always able to get everything done that I needed to get done.
I also started looking through The Charlotte Armstrong Treasury last night–you know I’ve chosen her Mischief as my next reread–and I was reading the introduction by Alice Cromie, and thinking, yes, this is all very true, Armstrong’s heroines were all women going about their every day lives and then had to buckle up and get to the bottom of something. I also reread the first page of The Witch’s House, and Armstrong’s skill at sucking her readers immediately into the story was incredibly apparent. I seriously had to resist reading more; Mischief is the reread, not The Witch’s House, but I might definitely have to come back around to it.
I also had a brilliant inspiration for “Festival of the Redeemer” yesterday. I admire Daphne du Maurier’s short stories immensely, particularly the longer ones, and I don’t precisely remember why or how this inspiration for the story came to me, but I am very pleased with it, and it makes the story much more du Maurier-like, which naturally made me like it even more. I always have trouble with the middles of my stories and novels, as you are probably already aware, and this idea is simply perfect, especially given the way the story opens. I also discovered, when I got home last night, that I had actually written a lot more on my story “You Won’t See Me” than I thought I had, which is always a plus. Sometimes I think I’ve written something and I actually haven’t; I just thought about it, and the thought is so vivid that later I think I actually wrote it all down and didn’t.
Or I did and lost the document, which is also always a possibility.
Okay, I can feel the caffeine kicking in, so it’s back to the spice mines with me.
Queer and Loathing in America 