Tuesday morning here after a relatively easy day in the spice mines. We weren’t very busy in the clinic (I had to cover again), and I was able to get a lot of work done in the office to get caught up. Huzzah! I stopped and made groceries on the way home, and once I was home, I strapped myself into the desk chair (despite Sparky’s whining) and worked for several hours on the book, and yes…I have found Scotty’s voice again. (Better late than never, right?) So that work also went well, and Paul and I caught up on a show we watch just before retiring for the evening. I slept extremely well again, and feel rested and alert this morning. I also don’t feel sore anywhere, which I hope will last for a while. I don’t think we’re very busy today in the clinic, either, which means I can catch up in my administrative duties even more today. Huzzah!
It’s also dark outside the windows this morning, since the equinox has already passed but the time change won’t occur for another full month or so–they moved it back to November, didn’t they? It was a very nice day, with not much humidity so it felt much cooler than usual for the month, and we’re almost to October…so I don’t know that the humidity won’t have one last hurrah? But it’s been very pleasant since the week before Bouchercon, and that’s been a lovely thing. We’re supposed to get rain today and the next couple of days (a significant shift from the weekend’s forecast, which said we wouldn’t get any this week, and I am delighted to know that isn’t, actually, the case), although the chances aren’t particularly high. But 20% chance is better than zero percent chance, amirite?
Apparently, today is supposedly the Rapture–which isn’t even in the Bible, of course–yet again; I’ve lost track of how many times Christians have promised us they’ll be leaving the planet only to sorely disappoint those of us who’d be delighted to get rid of that trash. I do keep meaning to go back and reread Revelations again–I want to write an essay about end times mythology, which would include The Omen–and I’ve also been going down wormholes lately about the Book of Enoch, which was excluded from the Christian Bible by that Nicaean Council (at whose feet so many of humanity’s worst problems can be lain) but is very interesting. A lot of religious-based fiction actually comes from Enoch; the Nephilim and the Sons of God and the giants and so forth, which is very interesting. (I’ve always wanted to write about the Nephilim, or at least one Nephilim character.) Does anyone know what time the Raptured are going to be leaving? Or is this yet another false fucking alarm, since no one knows the mind or will of God?
Heretics. Seriously.
And maybe–just maybe–the Book of Enoch can be the key to this Colin book I’ve wanted to write for decades now.
Because I don’t have enough books to write as it is, do I? #madness
And on that note, I am heading into the spice mines. I need to do some chores when I get home from work tonight–the dishes are out of control again, which means so is the kitchen–and it shouldn’t take me long to get it under control again so I can do some more writing. Have a lovely Tuesday, and I’ll be back on Pay-the-Bills Wednesday yet again!
Antinous as Osiris. Easy to see why Hadrian was obsessed, isn’t it?
Monday and back to the office with me this morning. I’m now recognizing that I need to appreciate every day I get to go into work because my job could easily go away at any moment, with a traitor in the White House who hates everything and everyone and has handed everything over to an unelected foreign illegal immigrant billionaire who essentially bought our country. Yay, tyranny!1 The Founding Fathers would be so proud. The American experiment had a decent run. And again, apologies to our former allies. DO your worst, we deserve it–even those who didn’t vote for it, because we were unable to stop it, and it goes back way further than 2015 and the ride down the golden escalator (an apt metaphor–our worship of the wealthy was literally a ride down to hell paved with gold). We didn’t start paying attention soon enough, complacent with our rights and our Constitution and our mythology that our institutions were strong enough to hold–despite being under steady and regular assault for the last forty years. (This really got going under Reagan, for the record. He was the first step on the path that led us here–the first cosplay Christian divorced celebrity to win the White House.)
I am a little groggy this morning, as getting up at six after not having to for the weekend isn’t an easy transition anymore. Damned disorienting blizzard, anyway. But I had a good day yesterday. I managed to get some writing done (yay!) and some stuff done around the house as well as did some reading. It was a a lovely relaxing day, and we finished watching season two of The Recruit, which turned out to be a lot of fun. I definitely recommend. The lead actor is terrific, and he’s also very good looking, which doesn’t hurt (I’m shallow, okay?). But there are so many of these international affairs/espionage shows now that it’s hard to tell them apart anymore, really. I do enjoy them, too–even if they are pretty much from the same cookie cutter and there’s always insane fight scenes and gun battles and things–which goes back to my love of Robert Ludlum novels and their intricate plotting. (I admire nothing more than an intricately plotted novel–see also Carl Hiassen and P. G. Wodehouse.) I had always wanted to try writing a spy adventure–spinning Colin out into his own series–but I haven’t traveled internationally very much and showing Colin working outside of New Orleans would be kind of weird. I have one idea I’ve been sitting on for a very long time for Colin; maybe someday.
The Super Bowl is also this weekend, and two major arteries for me to get home have been shut down–Poydras and Howard Avenues. I guess I’ll just have to go uptown and run errands this week on the way home rather than going straight home. Yay. And then it will be Carnival, and then…augh. I really need to get cracking on my writing. I know, it’s shocking that I’m having trouble focusing while living through an existential threat. I guess I need to really just push all of that out of my mind while focusing on writing as an act of activism. Writing queer stories has always been important, a way of shedding light on what it’s like to live and operate and love on the margins of society and culture. I’ve never spent a lot of time thinking about the political aspect of breathing life into queer characters and their stories, my focus is writing the best narrative that I can. But showing queer people existing, showing that they are normal and want the same things everything else does, is inherently an activist act when you live in a homophobic country2.
I don’t know why I am letting this bother me so much. I mean, after all, we have the Democratic Party fighting for us rolling over and playing dead but still, somehow, asking for money. Never again. Your party has died because of its inefficacy and its cowardice in the face of a threat. You’ve been cowards since 1980. “Oh no Fox might say something mean!” isn’t the position of strength we’ve been asking you to model for us for over forty years. Bravo for not rising to fight the threat to democracy–but your social media posts are really showing your constituents what you really think about us and how much you care about us…by doing absolutely fucking nothing. And when you do, you’ll simply blame us for not fighting hard enough or not donating enough money or something, I don’t know. Of course, the legacy media has also failed us completely, and continue to fail us on the daily, too. I no longer believe anything that comes from our legacy corporate media, frankly. I guess the irony of the legacy media becoming actual fake news after years of being accused of it will be more appreciated at some point in the future, I suppose.
Ironically, my idea for a dystopian novel set in the aftermath of the collapse of the US hasn’t been trying to invade and overwhelm my creativity. I guess when you’re watching as a country jerks through its final death throes writing about the collapse of civilization isn’t an intellectual creative pursuit anymore for me.
And on that cheery note, I am heading back into the spice mines. Have a great Monday, and I’ll be back tomorrow most likely.
To Mitch McConnell’s eternal shame and disgrace. ↩︎
Miss me with the “not all straight people” bullshit, thank you very much. ↩︎
I don’t remember the first time I saw that phrase somewhere, and I don’t know where it originates from, but actually–being gay used to be a crime (and our “supreme court” seems determined to make that so again), so I’ve always wondered if that was where it started from. I do like the phrase, though.
I also don’t remember how Sins of the Black Flamingo came to my attention, but it did. I subscribed so as not to miss an issue, and intended to read it all in one sitting so I could write about it…but never got around to it, like a loser, and as I was looking through the draft entries for the blog the other day, I saw that I’d started an entry after reading the first issue…but never finished reading the book nor, obviously, finished writing the entry.
the book nor, obviously, finished writing the entry.
And since the main character is gay…what better time to finish reading it, and blogging about it, then during Pride Month?
It did make sense to me.
I’ve read comic books for most of my life (in fact, comics are why I bought an iPad in the first place), but I’ve also taken long breaks from them, so am neither an expert nor even a super fan (although I would love to do a crime novel set in and around a comic books store; which could be fun and comical). I remember comics I read as a kid, and have some vague memories of other times when I dipped into the comics world as an adult. My iPad is filled with comics that I’ve never gotten around to reading—but what a lovely long weekend reading them all would make! Or maybe just take the iPad with me on a trip and read comics the whole time?
Anyway, I digress. I do need to do a longer form essay about my comics history while stressing the importance of how little I do know about my beloved comics…maybe for Pride next year, since it would take some serious rereading and research to do properly…and it could tie into one of the books currently in progress…but I am getting away from the purpose of this post: Sins of the Black Flamingo.
I mean, isn’t this art amazing?
Comic books helped shape me and my tastes. The original DC superheroes I followed were still drawn as ideal men of the past, like the 40s and 50s, big with a barrel torso, and muscular but not defined. DC Comics hadn’t really updated its characters from their early days much; but it was during my childhood at the end of the 60s and early 70s that they began modernizing their comic characters, their costumes, and how they looked—which I also noticed. This was also around the time that men’s bodies became more sexualized, and what was hot and sexy for men began to change. The women super-hero’s costumes also became more sexualized, as were their bodies (the Legion of Super-Heroes ALONE had some of the more revealing sexy costumes. Queer super-heroes (although why I never made the connection about Wonder Woman and the Amazons with their island of women only is a mystery to me) were non-existent and wouldn’t start showing up until the late 1980s and early 1990s—and it’s still a few and far-between kind of thing (the Will Peyton Starman run always seemed queer to me, which I’ll need to explore at another time).
So, you can imagine my delight to find this run with a gay burglar as the main character, who wears a costume and is extremely good at his job (I’ve always had a soft spot for burglars in fiction) and that was why I subscribed to the series. (Still shaking my head at how long it took me to finally read them all, and there was an pretty amazing cliff-hanger at the end of #1.)
But when I was a kid, the characters and story interested me more than the artwork, and even with my love of the characters and stories, I never followed either artists I enjoyed or writers, either. Which is probably not the best way to enjoy them, really; it was a friend who was an exceptional artist and comics fan in the 1980s who made me aware I should be paying attention to the artists and the writers…and I did find some extraordinary comics by looking for artists and writers of books from there on. The two I remember the most from that time are Todd McFarlane and John Byrne.
Sins of the Black Flamingo is self-classified as “occult noir,” which is a term I absolutely love and now can recognize that occult noir is something I absolutely love and probably write…and will most likely explore more in my own work going forward, since I now know what to call it, because supernatural never really fit in the same way and I don’t feel like the books I write are actually full-fledged horror, but occult noir? Oh, hell, yes.
Anyway, the Black Flamingo is the alter-ego of our hero, Sebastian Harlow. The Flamingo is probably one of the top cat burglars in the world (as you may know, I love cat burglars and originally made Colin one in Bourbon Street Blues), and Sebastian is this interesting combination of my two series characters, of all things; he looks and is built like Scotty, with the same approach to sex as he did before he met the boys, but has the dark worldview and cynicism of Chanse MacLeod…so naturally, I was going to be drawn to the character. IN the very beginning of Book One, he is hired to steal something from a right-wing museum—basically a museum dedicated to honoring white supremacy. It isn’t until he steals the item they’ve hired him to find that we learn the backstory behind the item…and a golem named Abel is brought to life, and Abel is hunky AF, I might add.
We also meet Sebastian’s close friend and ally, Ofelia, a Black witch—and yes, this is very much occult noir. The art is fantastic, and done by Travis Moore, with Tamra Bonvillain as colorist, Aditya Bidikar, and editor Andy Khouri, and Andrew Wheeler was the writer.I highly recommend this—if for no other reason than it’s a great gay story with an interesting main character, and who would have ever thought they’d see a gay circuit party within the pages of a comic?
I do hope there’s more adventures in store for the Flamingo in the future. Highly recommended.
Well, here we are on Monday morning after my surgery, and I’m not really sure what I’ll be doing today. I really need to pick up a prescription in Uptown, and we need to pick up the mail at some point, but I’m not really sure how I’m going to do that. I don’t know that I should risk driving yet, because New Orleans drivers are so horrible, but it has to be done and I need the prescription. I suppose I could take a ride service, but I hate spending the money as well. I guess I don’t have a choice though, so I’ll deal with that later. I also need to make groceries.
We had had an issue a few weeks ago with the apartment. They were doing some work on the patio deck above my kitchen, and unfortunately there was rotten wood up there. The ceiling kind of gave way; they ended up nailing up a piece of plywood over the hole in the ceiling. Unfortunately the next time it rained, of course, it leaked , but they finished the work up there and never came back to repair our ceiling. We had a massive thunderstorm Saturday night, and so i woke up Sunday morning to water on the floor in the kitchen, on the stove, and on the counter. The carpets in the kitchen were also wet; so I got out towels and a bucket for the dripping and hoped that the ceiling wouldn’t cave in. About two hours later, yeah, some of the plaster came down with a loud, startling crash, and so now there’s another hole in the ceiling. The insulation up there is soaked, so I had to leave the bucket for the dripping to continue. Needless to say, this is a really shitty time for this to happen and it spiraled me into a really bad depressive state yesterday. I have noted already that my emotions have been all over the place since the surgery — so something like this really sent me into a spiral. The anxiety really ramps up, so yeah, yesterday was just not a good day for me.
So, I repaired my easy chair with a Gatorade and Nurse Sparky and put on one of my comfort movies, Indiana Jones and The Last Crusade. I’ve always loved Indiana Jones, but I haven’t seen the most recent movie yet. I’ve always wanted to write an Indiana Jones type book; I love historical treasure hunts and have always thought that it would be fun to write those kind of stories with Colin as the main character — away from Frank and Scotty, to kind of fill in the blanks when he’s away from New Orleans. I have an idea that’s tied into the 4th crusade and the sack of Constantinople; a treasure hidden away in the Hagia Sophia since the Nicaean Council that established the dogma of Catholic Christianity. The Orthodox patriarchy had been keeping this treasure secret from the Pope and the Vatican for centuries, at least since the schism of 1052. My idea is that the Venetians and the Crusaders knew that the Pope would be furious to learn they had sacked Constantinople, but the Doge, Enrico Dandalo, not only knew about the secret but also knew presenting it to the Pope would get them forgiven. The primary problem with this is that I have never figured out what precisely was hidden in the Hagia Sophia; but I wanted to tie it into the Assassins and the Old Man of the Mountain. I thought that would make for a fun adventure, particularly setting it in a fictional Middle Eastern country. However, with everything that’s going on in the world nowadays, writing about the Middle East is probably not a good idea at this point.
I also read a lot of short stories over the weekend. I read all the stories in one of my Alfred Hitchcock Presents anthologies, Stories That Scared Even Me, and that was a lot of fun. The book was published originally in the 1960s or early 1970s and it is amazing how much attitudes in society and cultural attitudes have changed since that time. The contributors were almost entirely male — all of these anthologies are underrepresented with women — and there are a lot of really racist and patriarchal tropes in some of the stories. Several, for example, are set in Mexico; I’ll let your imagination do the rest rather than quote what they said so casually. I’m also writing a story set in Central America — I was writing it to submit to a horror anthology — and it was one that I had started writing back in the 1990s, I believe. I was kind of horrified by what I wrote — I feel like by the 1980s I should have known better about these kinds of tropes — but the story is salvageable; with some strong changes and a fictional country. But you can still get into trouble, even with that, and the last thing I ever want to do is write something problematic that will offend people. (I have already mentioned the story that I submitted to a anthology that’s not going to happen now about the South, which I recently reread and was horrified by.) A lot of these stories have those twisty type of endings that I always loved; that little hint of irony that really made the story sing. I always try to give my stories those kinds of endings because that’s what I grew up reading as far as short stories are concerned, and I often have to struggle to not try that with every story, because it’s not right for every story and I have a bad tendency to try to force things to work the way I want them to, instead of the way that they should work organically.
Dictating is much slower than typing, as I’ve noted before; this is taking me a lot longer to dictate then I would like. Where I actually typing this entry, I would probably already be finished by now. But you do what you have to do. I also started dictating my next book, figuring it’s better to get started on it while I’m at home recovering from the surgery, rather than waiting until such time as my left hand can be used for the keyboard. I’m still not having any pain — my primary issue is mobility, not being able to use my left hand for much, occasional nausea from the antibiotic, and the mood swings and depression. I wish I had already started on my anti-anxiety medication protocol before the surgery, but what can you do? Yesterday morning, I was thinking that I made a lot of bad decisions about this surgery and that I didn’t do it knowing everything that would result from it; but I was worried about not ever being able to go to the gym and workout again unless and until this was done, and pushing it back to next year wouldn’t have changed any of these issues, I don’t think, other than possibly better planning on my part. But that’s also part of the anxiety—I always question my decisions, and never really believe that I made the right choices afterward. I guess it is just a part of that hindsight being 20/20 thing that always drives me crazy. I never really am confident in the decisions I make, so I always try to not second-guess or doubt myself afterward; there’s no point in rehashing things that you can’t change. Why obsess over something I have no control over anymore? That’s the easiest way to drive yourself crazy, I think.
We’re also really enjoying the show Bodies on Netflix. It has everything that I like; a bit of science fiction, crime, surprise twists, and gay content. You can never go wrong with me when you have gay content. (That’s not entirely true; there are some really terrible shows in movies with gay content that are basically unwatchable) I also finished watching a Jane Seymour series on Acorn called HarryWild, which wasn’t great but was entertaining enough. I don’t know what all I’ve been watching to be honest with you, Constant Reader, but I’ve been watching an awful lot of television.
I did watch a terrible adaptation of Agatha Christie’s The Mirror Crack’d, and the less said about that the better.
I’m hoping today or tomorrow to be able to read a novel; I’m really enjoying the one that I was reading before the surgery and would like to finish it, but my mind is all over the place and has been since coming home from the surgery. I haven’t even been able to focus on the TV I’ve been watching as much as I would like. Part of it is the depression, part of it is the holiday without Mom, and of course, the surgery. You see how I am? I’m being hard on myself after a major surgery for not getting anything done or being productive. Heavy sigh. Welcome to the wonderful world of what goes on inside my head.
And on that note, I am going to bring this to a close and see if I can figure out what I’m going to do for the rest of the day, and what I can do about these errands. I hope you have a lovely Monday and as always, thank you for checking in and thank you for reading.
He met Marmalade down in old New Or-leenz, strutting her stuff on the street, she said “hello, hey Joe, you want to give it a go?“
That classic song by Labelle came out while I was in high school, during the early to mid-1970’s, and there was a lot of prurient young teenager thrill in knowing that the French lyrics translated to “do you wanna have sex with me tonight?” But the song–essentially about a hooker in New Orleans and a man’s experience with her–was an introduction to another side of New Orleans–one you wouldn’t find in the World Book Encyclopedia.
It was very important to me, for a variety of reasons, to make Scotty someone who embraced his sexual orientation and sexuality. I wanted to write someone who LOVED having sex, loved beautiful men, and felt no Puritan-American based shame about enjoying sex. Those kinds of characters were few and far between in gay fiction, let alone in gay crime fiction. After writing the typical miserable cynical bitter gay man with Chanse, I didn’t want to do that again. I wanted Scotty was to be the obverse of Chanse in everything, except their mutual love of New Orleans.
(This was, in part, in response to being briefly dropped by Alyson when I signed the Scotty series with Kensington, being told “two mystery series set in New Orleans would be too alike.” I took that personally, as an insult to my talent, ambition, creativity, and abilities…and I think I proved my point. Once Murder in the Rue Dauphine and Bourbon Street Blues were released–and Rue Dauphine sold super well for them and was nominated for a Lammy–Alyson changed their minds. I’m still mad at myself for not asking for more money.)
But while Scotty was highly sexually active, he never got paid for it. He also never did porn–although I did consider that at one point as an option; I thought a murder mystery built around a porn shoot would be interesting and kind of fun. And of course, in this book he mentions that he and the guys have recorded themselves having sex, and have sexted each other.
Scotty always preferred to keep his status amateur–but he was a go-go boy (stripper, exotic dancer, dick dancer, whatever you prefer to call the guys who dance for dollars in gay bars wearing various kinds of male undergarments), and he was certainly someone who was not averse to having a sexual encounter with a handsome stranger. (There’s a joke about this in Mississippi River Mischief where Frank comments after they’ve met someone, “I’ve been with you for almost twenty years. If you think I can’t tell by now that you’ve recognized someone but you’re not sure from where, which means you’ve probably slept with them, think again”–a paraphrase, but you get the gist; Scotty is often running into men who look vaguely familiar, and that usually does mean he slept with them a long time ago.)
New Orleans, despite it’s rather prim-and-proper high society set (on the surface, anyway), with the Pickwick Club and the Boston Club and the mysterious Mystick Krewes of Rex and Comus and so on, has always been a city of loose morals and freewheeling attitudes towards sex and sexuality. We had a zone where prostitution was legal for three decades or so (Storyville) and I wouldn’t be surprised if there were several bordellos operating within the city limits as we speak. There was the arrest of the Canal Street madam; and of course local author Chris Wiltz wrote The Last Madam, a biography of notorious Norma Wallace–the last well-known madam in the city. (Which I need to reread…) Bourbon Street was known for its strippers and vice for decades; there are still strip clubs on the infamous strip running from Canal downtown to Esplanade–and there are usually men in bikinis or something equally scanty on the bars of the gay clubs down down around the St. Ann/Bourbon queer nexus of the Quarter. When I was starting my deep dive into New Orleans/Quarter history, I wasn’t surprised to find out there were “stag” bars down along the riverfront along the levee; and if someone at one of the fancy houses in Storyville had a predilection for the Greek vice that needed scratching, the madam would send one of her bouncers down there to find someone willing to turn a trick, with a fair share going to the house, of course.
I think that’s fascinating, really; and something I want to explore in a story. I’ve started the story (it’s “The Blues Before Dawn” which I’ve mentioned from time to time) but can’t quite nail down the crime part of it. The set-up is great, though, he typed modestly.
I didn’t intend for Scotty to wind up in what is now known as a throuple–a three way couple, or a relationship of three people–on purpose. I wanted to create the dynamic of two men being interested in him at the same time, and have some fun with that in the first book. I absolutely did, and when I sent Colin away at the end of the first one, that was deliberate. I couldn’t decide who Scotty should wind up with, and I wanted Frank to be really who he logically should end up with–but this bad boy with a mysterious background who was so hot and sexy? I couldn’t NOT bring him back, and so I decided I had three books to wrap up the romantic dilemma. I wasn’t certain what the backstory of the dilemma would be, or how it would turn out, or how it would go–but when I was writing Jackson Square Jazz I found the perfect place and perfect way to bring Colin back. That book ended with them deciding to try a throuple to see how it works out. It was going pretty well until Mardi Gras Mambo–and I tried really hard with that book to not end the romantic story the way it ended in that book…and finally decided, since the series was actually turning out to be popular, that I would finish it by the end of the fourth book.
I’ve also not talked about it in the books or on this blog at all, but….they also have an open relationship. (Someone asked me about this at some point after the last book came out.) Nothing else would work for Scotty–he may not take advantage of the opportunities that pop up now the way he used to, but that’s because he has the freedom to make that choice. If he was forbidden from outside sexual relationships, he would cheat–and he doesn’t want to do that because that’s hurtful and wrong. He never wants to hurt Frank or Colin–but both of them are also away from New Orleans for long periods of time; Colin off doing his international agent stuff, while Frank is on the wrestling tour doing shows and promo events; so they are on their own a lot and temptation is always there–after all, all three of them are gorgeous–so while it is unspoken on the page, it’s an open throuple. And usually, Scotty finds outside sex to be kind of dull, unemotional, and not nearly as much fun as it is with one or both of the guys. That’s a character development arc. I also don’t show Scotty going out to clubs or waking up with hangovers with a stranger in his bed anymore, either. He does still go out–he loves dancing–but the gay bar scene has changed since he was younger and he doesn’t find it to be nearly as much fun as he used to.
Though he won’t say no to a hit of Ecstasy during Carnival or Decadence.
How subtle are the changes in Scotty as he has grown, aged and evolved? I think they are miniscule, but a revisit of the first two books in the series has shown a lot of change and growth over the years for him. He is definitely not that same flighty twenty-nine year old who booked a gig dancing at Southern Decadence all those years ago to make rent and wound up kidnapped by neo-Nazis deep in a swamp–I think he’s a little less flighty and a lot more responsible than he used to be…though he’s not as responsible as most people his age. Turning him into a property owner in the Quarter from a renter–and letting Millie and Velma ride off into the sunset in Florida as retirees–has also made him grow up, as now taking care of the property is his responsibility.
I will always be fond of my Scotty, though, and hope to keep writing him till I can no longer type into a computer or speak into a word-to-text app.
my neighborhood is so beautiful at night, isn’t it?
As if you weren’t sick of my self-promotion already, now I get to start promoting Mississippi River Mischief!
It’s hard to believe that this is Scotty’s ninth adventure. Not bad for someone who was just supposed to be a one-off, a stand-alone comic madcap adventure that took place during Southern Decadence. The idea for it came to me at Southern Decadence in 1999; on Saturday afternoon I somehow managed to get a prime spot on the balcony at the Parade to watch the massive crowd of sweating shirtless men partying down below at the intersection of Bourbon and St. Ann. I noticed a really hot guy wearing sweats and carrying a gym bag fighting his way through the crowd to get to the Pub downstairs, and I recognized him as one of the dancers for the weekend. In that instant, I had a mental flash of a dancer being chased through a crowd of shirtless sweating men at the corner by bad guys with guns and the dancer only wearing a lime-green thong. I held that idea in my head, and sometime later that weekend Paul said to me, “you know, you should write a book set during Decadence,” and I grinned and replied, “I already have the idea.” I had started writing a short story called “Bourbon Street Blues” a year or so before this; but realized that would make a better title for the stripper crime caper during Southern Decadence, so I made a folder for it and kept it in my files and in the back of my mind. Several years later, when talking with an editor about something else when I worked at Lambda Book Report, I asked if that might be something he’d be interested in. He said send him a proposal, which I did–having no clue what I was doing–and they offered me a two book deal, turning my stand-alone into a series. Having no idea how to write the second book in such a series, the money was too good for me to say no or to quibble, figuring I’ll figure it out when I need to–which is really the motto of my career.
The Scotty series has always had a bit of a “pantser” feel to it for me because I’ve always pantsed it. I knew that the first adventure–Bourbon Street Blues–was going to be that Southern Decadence story, and I also knew I was going to fictionalize a governor race, basing it on a senate race that occurred when we first moved here and we couldn’t believe that one of the candidates was actually a serious candidate (sadly, he was just a harbinger of what was to come in Louisiana; now he’d seem like one of the fucking sane ones), and I kind of borrowed, a bit unconsciously, from the Stephen King character of Greg Stillson from The Dead Zone. Bourbon Street Blues was a prescient novel in so many ways–and I had no idea of that at the time, seriously. There’s a scene where the Goddess shows Scotty the potential flooding of New Orleans after a levee failure (in the book it was deliberate though) and of course I predicted the Right’s move into full-bore hardcore neo-Nazism as well in that book…never dreaming it would become a reality.
Scotty has always been a fly-by-the-seat-of-my-pants series; I’ve never really outlined or planned the books or the series in any way, other than an amorphous idea that the love triangle situation I created in the first book would take three books to resolve. During the course of the third book I realized I needed at least one more book to resolve that story, and so it went from stand-alone to trilogy to quartet…and then Katrina happened. Katrina created an unplanned gap in the series, and I never really knew how to do Katrina from a Scotty perspective. It struck me that they wouldn’t have evacuated, but Scotty wouldn’t have ridden the storm out in his apartment, nor would his parents have done so at their place; they would have all gone to the Garden District where Papa and Maman Diderot have a generator. I just didn’t see how I could write a funny Scotty book about the levee failure and the city’s destruction. Also, we learned something about Scotty in the second book (Jackson Square Jazz) that I meant to deal with in the fourth book. By the time I was ready and able and willing to write that fourth book in the series…well, I forgot that I’d planned on dealing with that issue from Scotty’s past in it, and never did ever circle back around to that resolution of something from his youth.
I did remember when I decided to write Mississippi River Mischief, though. I kind of wrote myself into a corner with Royal Street Reveillon, in which something happened in Scotty’s personal life that was tied into the case, but I couldn’t write another book and pretend that never happened, even though it would be hard to deal with in the text of the book and story. But then, as I was trying to work it out in my head, I realized now you can circle around back to that issue from Scotty’s teen years because this is the right place and time for him to be reminded of it because of what happened to Taylor.
And you know what? I think it made for a better story now than it would have almost fourteen years ago.
Scotty has grown a lot over the twenty or so years (!!!) I’ve been writing him, but who he is at his core has never changed. Scotty is a good person, with a genuine sense of kindness, and is pretty level-headed and never really lets things get to him the way I let things get to me–and God knows, he’s dealt with a lot more shit than I have in life. I like his sense of humor, I like his spirituality, and I like his untrained, he-doesn’t-know-how-it-works psychic abilities, and of course, I love his family. His parents are amazing, his older brother and sister are also pretty cool characters, and of course Frank and Colin are also fun to write. I also never knew how subversive I was being by creating a throuple long before anyone ever talked about these kinds of relationships within the queer community–and it’s lasted all these years. There have been ups and downs, of course, but they always wind up coming back together again no matter what happens–and a lot has happened. Both Scotty and Frank have been shot a few times, not to mention all those car accidents–and he’s also helped cover up a crime (no spoilers here, no worries!).
Wednesday and we’ve made it to the midpoint of the week. Huzzah? Perhaps. I didn’t sleep all that great last night–I am expected to crash really hard this afternoon–but oddly enough I feel rested and okay and alert this morning, and I am still on my first cup of coffee. Who knew? Last night when I got home from work i buckled down and worked for a bit; I am still behind on everything but I am hoping I can get this manuscript I am editing today finished and back to the author, and then I can sort of maybe get back to my own. My publisher has pushed the publication date back, which is lovely yet not something I am terribly proud of–I feel like I allowed my personal situation to interfere with work, which is something I’ve not done since the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina–but while I was able to work during a pandemic, personal grief managed to derail me so fa this year; but it’s also not fair to blame it all on grief because I was already way behind on everything when Mom actually died. But I am thinking this is really a great thing. The revision, when I was able to do it, was going pretty well; but I wasn’t working the way I usually do which is partly why it was taking me so long to get it done, and I think with a new, later deadline, I can go back to the first chapter and start over again; and do it the way I always do and get it finished.
Paul had a board meeting last night so was later getting home than usual, so I wound up staying up later than I usually do so we could watch this week’s episode of Ted Lasso, which, while having sad moments, was overall a joy to watch. I hate that the season is winding down–which means the series is winding down as well–but I am hoping for at least one spin-off. I love all the characters on this show, even the minor ones; so much characterization and care has been taken with the creation and development of every character on the show, and that has always been its strength. (I still can’t believe that Jamie Tartt has become one of my favorite characters of not just the show but of all time. So many people in the cast deserve Emmys…I hope the producers are smart enough to toss some of them into the Guest Actor categories; certainly the young man playing Colin deserves some recognition for his moving and nuanced portrayal of a closeted soccer player; I also hope he finally introduces his boyfriend to the team as his boyfriend; maybe the series finale?)
I also got some potentially good news that I have to be vague about this morning; there’s no guarantee that the new opportunity that may have opened up for me will come to fruition, but it’s always nice to have something nice happen? Especially in this business, where it seems like you never know where things are going to and nothing is confirmed until the ink dries on the contract, so…yeah, have to be vague if nothing comes of it. But even if nothing does come of it, it was deeply satisfying for the potential to drop into my inbox yesterday. I am very lucky, I must admit; it’s very hard for me to ever feel bitter (or at least, never for very long) about my career because it’s always been charmed, almost from the day I sold my first short story back in 1999; opportunities keep coming my way and it’s been an absolutely lovely joyride. It’s also funny, because I was talking to someone recently about how the good things in my career have usually happened during dark personal times; so I never seem to get to enjoy the good things when they occur. Maybe it’s some kind of karmic balance I need to keep; ma’at, as the Egyptians used to call it–most of the time everything is even, but when things swing too far to the bad in the personal, the professional side of things always seems to pick up for some reason? I don’t know, and it could all turn out to be nothing, but it’s nice, nevertheless. It’s always nice when people are interested in more work for you. And being the socially awkward/insecure person that I am, it’s always a huge relief when someone you’ve worked with asks you for more work; I always worry that I’ve been a pain in the ass to work with…and I don’t want to be one of those people.
My blog post about the origin story of my The Horror photo turned out to be popular? Who knew? I didn’t think it was that interesting of a story, but everyone seemed to enjoy reading about it. It was just something I dashed off during my lunch break yesterday because I was feeling tired but had to wait for my Lean Cuisine (Swedish meatballs, for the record) to cool, and I thought why not write about how that picture came to be taken? Why not indeed?
And on that note, I am heading into the spice mines. Have a lovely day, Constant Reader, and I will check in with you again tomorrow.
Sunday morning rolling around like a marble in the Mousetrapgame–do they still sell that? We never had that game when we were kids–I remember having Clue, Monopoly, Life, and Chinese checkers, but never Mousetrap. We were a game family, often playing cards–Rook, Hearts, Spades, and Pinochle were enormous favorites within the family–and much later adding Uno and Trivial Pursuit (although no one will pay Trivial Pursuit anymore because I always win; and have even won on my first turn). Yesterday was kind of a lovely day, overall; I slept deeply and late, got up and did some things around the apartment; soaked my toe and slathered topical gel over it all day; read Bobby Mathews’ quite marvelous Living the Gimmick for a while, and worked. (Bobby’s book is really good, y’all) The work wasn’t easy but it also wasn’t difficult; in fact, I was kind of enjoying myself, which for me is lovely and encouraging. I do have to run out to the grocery store at some point today, but I’m not going to get terribly worked up and/or upset about it. I slept decently last night; I feel rested this morning but managed to get up early and am hoping that today will be a good, productive one.
The Lefty Awards were given out last night in Tucson: I lost Best Humorous to Ellen Byron and her delightful Bayou Book Thief; Kellye Garrett won Best Novel for Like a Sister; Wanda Morris won Best Historical for Anywhere You Run; and Ramona Emerson won Best Debut for Shutter. Congratulations to everyone! It was both a thrill and a surprise to be nominated in the first place, completely unexpected, and just a bit sad that the “race” is over. I can’t imagine being nominated another time, to be honest, but am very grateful for everyone who included A Streetcar Named Murder.
I still get to enjoy being an Agatha nominee for another month, though.
Yesterday was pretty good, over all. I did get a lot done, and I was pleased with the work I got done. I’m feeling a lot better these days about everything, really; it’s hard for me to explain but it feels like I’ve been operating on autopilot since even before the pandemic started; like there was a dark cloud inside my head that I somehow managed to get things done, but it was harder than it used to be. I don’t feel like that dark cloud is there anymore, at least not since last weekend, and it’s delightful to be free of that whatever-it-was. Depression and anxiety, most likely; I know I’ve been worrying about Mom in the back of my mind for years now, and I still kind of tense up when I get a text message alert from my phone. I guess a lot of that worry has now transferred over to Dad, but he’s healthy–or at least has been so far. The grief comes and goes still–far less frequently than before–but it still happens from time to time that I’ll get a bit overwhelmed and have to go withdraw from the world for a while.
While I was waiting for Paul to get home and after I had finished working for the day, I decided to watch a movie instead of just endless scrolling through social media and looking for things on Youtube to watch. I couldn’t remember if I had seen Uncharted or not; I like Tom Holland and still kind of enjoy Mark Wahlberg (while admitting that he’s probably not a great person–it’s complicated), so I queued it up and started watching. As I watched, I began remembering things from it, so I had seen it before, just didn’t remember it. It didn’t take long for me to start punching holes in the plot/story, and I remembered that it became so far-fetched that I didn’t enjoy it. I was about forty-three minutes into it when I gave up; the entire premise that Magellan had a fortune in gold that somehow got lost (he didn’t; he didn’t stay anywhere long enough to amass such a treasure) was simply taken for granted without explanation; that’s the legend so we just don’t question it. Props for using an actual historical figure to give it more authenticity, but…it also lost me. We watched the SEC Gymnastics championships (LSU came in third, but it really was a matter of tenths of points), then finished watching Servant, which was interesting and different and strange and very well done before catching this week’s The Mandalorian, which wasn’t a particularly good one. I’m not feeling this season, to be honest; and of course the best part–Baby Yoda–hasn’t really had much to do except just kind of be there.
Such a shame about Uncharted, really. I love treasure hunts, but they are so rarely (outside of Indiana Jones and Romancing the Stone) featured in good movies that I’m always a little hesitant to watch one. I still want to do my Colin treasure hunt book sometime, but God only knows when. The Festivals are this week, so Paul will be moving into the Monteleone Hotel on Wednesday, most likely, and I’ll probably go down there on Friday. I’m going to have to commute, which isn’t going to be easy–the limping toe, for example–so we don’t have to board Scooter, and means I will probably be exhausted by the end of the weekend. So be it, seriously. I definitely need to make a to-do list today; I’ve been operating without one for quite some time and I think it’s necessary for me going forward to stay on track with everything,
And on that note, I am going to read some more Bobby Mathews while my coffee continues to warm me up. I have some chores to do around the house (as always) and I am going to run over to the Fresh Market at some point to get some things (not entirely sure what is needed, to be honest, with Paul going away on Wednesday), and so I must be busy and productive today. Have a lovely Sunday, Constant Reader, and I will check in with you again tomorrow.
Saturday morning in the Lost Apartment and all is well this morning. I slept in a bit (I also went to bed later than I usually do, so I slept about the same amount, really) and feel rested and relaxed this morning, which is always a nice, pleasant thing to feel. I didn’t get much work done on the book yesterday (355 words, all of them bad except maybe “Scotty” and “Frank” and “Colin”) but that’s okay; I feel a lot less stressed and a lot less pressured this morning about everything that needs to be done now. The stuff all needs to get done, of course; that hasn’t changed, but I am not feeling as much stress about it as I was feeling yesterday.
I read more of ‘salem’s Lot last night while I was waiting for my friend Ellen Byron (buy her books! Bayou Book Thief is amazing!) to text me to meet her for a drink. I picked her up at the Sazerac House (Canal and Magazine) and it had been quite a while since I drove down that way in the evening, and yikes. SO much traffic, so many people everywhere. I’m still not used to pedestrians in the CBD at night, even though the area hasn’t been a ghost town at night in years, but then we swung around and came up to have drinks at St. Vincent’s, which has been renovated and redone and remade and turned into a boutique luxury hotel right here in the heart of my neighborhood. I’ve posted some pictures of the place when I was doing my walks through the neighborhood last year; it’s even more beautiful inside than I imagined. These weekend is Tulane Homecoming, so there are a shit ton of people in town (that’s actually what brought Ellen to New Orleans, in fact; she is an alum) for that, and of course the people from Mississippi here for today’s LSU game in Baton Rouge (Geaux Tigers!). It was lovely to sit and have a drink and talk about writing and books and this crazy business we are in; she’s an absolute delight (buy her books!) and I look forward to the next time I get to see her.
But this morning I realized how utterly I am failing at reading. October is winding down; Halloween is a week from Monday, and I still haven’t finished my reread of ‘salem’s Lot, let alone done my annual Halloween reread of The Haunting of Hill House or getting caught up on the horror novels in my TBR pile. I’ll spend some more time with Mr. King this morning before I run my errands–I have to go get the mail and I have to stop at the grocery store because I want to make white bean chicken chili tomorrow, and have nothing I need for that–and I am debating whether I want to grill burgers today or not. The LSU game is on today at 2:30, and of course Skate America is airing this weekend (yay for figure skating!) so I’ll have to write around those times.
The reread of ‘salem’s Lot is a lot of fun, actually; I am really enjoying this revisit of the book and seeing why I enjoyed it so much the first time around. King wasn’t STEPHEN KING yet when he wrote and published it, so I am sure it didn’t get the kindest reception from critics of the time; particularly when you take into consideration what they considered to be great writing back then. I don’t remember when it was that the Literati changed their mind on Stephen King, but I do remember how he wasn’t taken seriously as a writer by them for a very long time (he writes horror! He’s too prolific to be a real writer!), and some of his best work was already behind him by the time he got the anointing he deserved for a very long time. I mean, he had quite a run, and quite a varied one at that, before he finally published a book I didn’t like (The Tommyknockers, for the record) and it seemed an aberration as he seemed to climb back on the horse and right the saddle in the next one after that. I love how many points of view he uses in ‘salem’s Lot, giving us little glimpses of fully realized characters and their lives to show us human beings so that when they actually wind up becoming vampires, you do feel a sense of loss. Many of these minor characters are objects of sympathy, while others you just kind of shrug when the vampires come for them and think, well, you were a shitty person anyway, oh well, this is justice of a sort. The scene where Mike Ryerson has to finish burying the coffin of Danny Glick is one of the most terrifying scenes I’ve ever read, and it still holds up today. I like how King gets into the point of view character’s head and gives them a voice–which is still King’s, but different from the other voices he uses–and that sort of structured stream of consciousness is something I really like and enjoy reading; I sometimes use that style in my own writing.
(I started to write something self-deprecating, but am proud of myself for catching it and not doing it. Progress.)
And on that note, I am going to head into the manuscript and do some cleaning before the errands are run. Have a lovely day, Constant Reader, and I will check in with you again later or tomorrow.
That’s not entirely true, you know. Yes, Bourbon Street Blues was always supposed to be a stand alone (I know you’re tired of the story) and they offered a two book series deal and I took it, thinking I would just figure it out later. Well, I did figure it out later; and when I started writing Bourbon Street Blues I already knew there would be a second book and so I had to set it up in the first as well as plant seeds for the next one after that–if there was going to be another one after that. I didn’t know for sure or not whether there would be a third, so when I was writing the first I kept the personal story as simple as I could in case there wouldn’t be a third and I could wrap it all up with the second if need be. But by the time I finished writing Jackson Square Jazz I was already pretty confident there would be a third (the first had just come out and was doing extremely well) so even if the third still ended up not being contacted, everything wrapped up as nicely as possible at the end of Jackson Square Jazz.
I decided the main mystery plot of the book would have to do with the Cabildo Fire of 1988.
When Paul and I had first moved here, sometime within that first year we saw a documentary on our local PBS station (WYES, for the record, thanks for asking, you there in the back) about the Cabildo Fire. I can only imagine how the city reacted to the news that a fire had broken out in one of our most beautiful buildings and recognizable landmarks–especially given its proximity to the landmark of the city: St. Louis Cathedral, and on its other side, the Presbytere. The documentary focused on the remarkable methods the New Orleans Fire Department went to, not only to fight the fire and prevent its spread to other historic buildings nearby, but to preserve the contents of the inside. The Cabildo is the Louisiana State Museum, and it’s filled with all kinds of artifacts and art documenting the history of New Orleans and the Louisiana territory. They brought fire-fighting boats to the levee, and borrowed more from the Coast Guard. They began hosing down the buildings around the Cabildo so they’d be too wet for the fire to spread.
And firemen were sent inside to remove as much of the contents before they turned the hoses on the Cabildo itself.
They literally lined paintings, framed historic documents, and various other historical artifacts with a variety of values along the fence surrounding Jackson Square, delaying until they had no other choice but to turn the hoses onto the Cabildo.
How easy it would have been to walk off with something priceless in its historic value, I thought, thinking of Robin Cook’s marvelous Sphinx and its opening with the tomb of Tutankhamun being robbed before flashing forward to the present day where a young female Egyptologist happens upon a magnificent statue from antiquity; a golden statue of Pharaoh Seti I. I pictured another young woman, in an antiques shop in the Quarter, happening upon something that looks like an artifact lost during the Cabildo Fire (they saved over 80% of the museum’s contents, by the way), and decided upon the Louisiana Purchase treaty. I could also call the book Louisiana Purchase (which also is the name of the state’s food assistance program; you get a Louisiana Purchase card with an amount loaded onto it every month), and possibly weave something about a food assistance program scandal of some sort woven into it as well. I viewed this as a spin-off stand alone for my character Paige Tourneur from the Chanse series (I had always wanted to write about her), and I thought, you know, the Cabildo Fire and some McGuffin gone missing from the museum would make a great plot for the second Scotty book.
The more I thought about it, the more I liked it.
And, being a dutiful writer, I contacted the administrative offices of the Louisiana State Museum and made an appointment to discuss my book and the fire with Executive Director Jim Sefcik.
And when I met with Jim, I discovered, to my great surprise, that not only had he been working there the day of the fire…it was his first day on the job.
“I was sitting in La Madeleine having coffee and a pastry,” he said (where Stanley is now used to be a La Madeleine; I used to get coffee there all the time during the Williams Festival), “when I heard a fire engine. I looked out the window and saw a firetruck pull up onto the pedestrian mall and stop in front of the Cabildo. As I thought that can’t be good another one pulled up from the other direction and THAT was when I saw the smoke.”
He gave all the credit to the fire chief for how everything was saved–“I just kept saying yes yes, whatever you think is best”–and I remember saying, “Well, at least you got it over with on your first day.”
He laughed, and replied, “Yes, now whenever there’s a crisis of any kind I just think well, at least the Cabildo isn’t on fire and that kind of puts things into perspective.”
He even gave me Polaroid snapshots of the aftermath of the fire; they’d scanned the originals long since to archive them. I just found them again Saturday when I was cleaning out cabinets, you can imagine my delight to stumble over them all these years later.
He also explained to me why the Louisiana Purchase treaty wouldn’t work as the MacGuffin (the original is stored in a vault at the Library of Congress; the display in the Cabildo is a copy and it is multiple pages long) and suggested the Napoleon death mask as a suitable alternative–even telling me a wonderful story about how the one in the Cabildo (there were four or five made) disappeared and then turned up in trash dump about thirty years later.
And he was right. It worked perfectly.
Danger is my middle name.
Okay, so that’s not strictly the truth. My middle name is Scott. But when you’re first name is Milton and you’re last name is Bradley, you’ve got to do something. Yes, that’s right, my name is Milton Bradley, and no, I’m not an heir to the toy empire. My parents, you see, are counter-culturalists who own a combination tobacco/coffee shop in the French Quarter. They both come from old-line New Orleans society families; my mom was a Diderot, of the Garden District Diderots. Mom and Dad fell in love when they were very young and began rebelling against the strict social strata they were born into. The Bradleys blame it all on my mom. The Diderots blame my dad. My name came about because my older brother and sister were given what both families considered to be inappropriate names: Storm and Rain. According to my older brother, Mom and Dad had planned on naming me River Delta Bradley. Both families sat my parents down in a council of war and demanded that I not be named after either a geological feature or a force of nature. After hours of arguing and fighting, Mom finally agreed to give me a family name.
Unfortunately, they weren’t specific. So she named me Milton after her father and Scott, which was her mother’s maiden name. Hence, Milton Scott Bradley.
My older brother, Storm, started calling me Scotty when I was a kid because other kids were making fun of my name. Kids really are monsters, you know. Being named Storm, he understood. My sister Rain started calling herself Rhonda when she was in high school. Our immediate family still calls her Rain, which drives her crazy. But then, that’s the kind of family we are.
So, yeah, danger really isn’t my middle name, but it might as well be. Before Labor Day weekend when I was twenty-nine, my life was pretty tame. I’m an ex-go-go boy; I used to tour with a group called Southern Knights. I retired from the troupe when I was twenty-five, and became a personal trainer/aerobics instructor. The hours were great, the pay was okay for the most part, and I really liked spending a lot of time in the gym. Every once in a while I would fill in dancing on the bar at the Pub, a gay bar on Bourbon Street, when one of their scheduled performers cancelled—if I needed the money. That Labor Day weekend, which is Southern Decadence here in New Orleans, I was looking forward to meeting some hot guys and picking up the rent money dancing on the bar. I certainly wasn’t expecting to be almost killed a couple of times or to have my apartment burn to the ground. I also didn’t expect to wind up as an undercover stripper for the FBI.
It’s a really long story.
The one good thing that came out of that weekend was I met a guy: Frank Sobieski, this mound of masculine, hard muscle with a scar on his cheek, who also happened to be a Fed. They don’t come any butcher than Frank. We hit it off pretty well, and he decided that once his twenty years with the FBI were up, he’d retire and move to New Orleans. I’ve always been a free agent. It’s not that I didn’t want to have a boyfriend, I just never thought I would find one. I enjoyed being single. I mean, young, single and gay in New Orleans is a lot of fun. It doesn’t hurt that people find me attractive, either. I’m about five nine, with wavy blondish hair that’s darker underneath. I wrestled in high school, mainly because the other kids were bullying me because they sensed I was gay. I’ve been working out ever since. Anyone who tells you being in shape doesn’t make a difference in your life is lying. It does.
But I needed a reason for the death mask-MacGuffin to come across Scotty’s path.
So, I turned back to the personal story of Scotty again.
It’s October now, been about five or six weeks since Labor Day and Halloween looms. There’s not been another word from Colin since the end of Bourbon Street Blues and Frank has put in for his retirement while he and Scotty are doing the long-distance thing; Scotty is finding it a bit restraining and having never really wanted or care about being in a relationship, is starting to have second thoughts about giving up his freedom. He has just come back from visiting Frank in DC and that visit has set his teeth on edge and made him even more nervous about Frank moving to New Orleans. David picks him up at the airport, hands him a joint, and Scotty goes on a bender…
…and wakes up with a massive hangover in bed the next morning, realizing to his horror that he is not in bed alone.
How relatable is that? I know I’ve been there more times than I care to remember.
And I realized, the trick is the key linking Scotty to said MacGuffin and the mystery, and as a big figure skating fan I decided to make him a figure skater, in town for Skate America. Scotty doesn’t know he’s a skater until he’s actually at the event and sees him warming up on the ice–and then he gets a note to meet him at his hotel room at the Hotel Aquitaine later that evening, along with the room’s key card–but Scotty shows up only to find a dead man with a knife in his chest.
This one was fun, and having Scotty’s weird ‘psychic’ power allow him to commune with the ghost of a long-dead fireman who knows the answer everyone is looking for was also a lot of fun. (I liked the concept of having Scotty and his mom go down to watch them fight the fire when he was a little boy.)
What a fun book this was to write!
I introduced a very fun Texas millionaire who collects things and doesn’t care how he acquires them (I even brought him back in Baton Rouge Bingo); was able to bring Colin back only to find out he’s not really a cat burglar but actually an international agent-for-hire working for the Blackledge Agency and thus created the “who will he wind up with” romantic triangle; and even had Scotty living in half of David’s shotgun while his home on Decatur Street was being rebuilt (which I had forgotten about until the skim-rereads and changes something with the new book). I also had Scotty get kidnapped again, and this book had the first of his many car accidents. It also contained Scotty’s first trip (in the series) to the West Bank.
One thing I forgot to mention when I was writing about Bourbon Street Blues the other day was how the series (books) were always intended to be insane and over-the-top*; always. The problem I always have with writing this series is stopping myself because something strains credulity and then I have to remind myself, “this series was always intended to be like New Orleans itself: completely unbelievable until experienced personally, and always over the top and ridiculous.”
Which is part of the fun, you know?
*For one example, Bryce Bell, the young skater, lands a quad-axel at Skate America. To put that in the proper perspective, to date no one had landed one competitively, although there’s a young American skater who can land them in practice….eighteen years later.
PS: When this book was released, I got asked a lot if I had posed for the cover; the same thing happened with Bourbon Street Blues; I was always apologizing for not being the cover model. With this book, I assumed it was the same thing…but later I realized they weren’t asking about the guy in front with this shirt open but the guy in back kissing his neck. At the time, I had a goatee and shaved head; this guy also has this and he does kind of look like me. What can I say?
Queer and Loathing in America 