Tag: Donna Andrews

American Heartbeat

Well, I didn’t get my blatant self-promotion done yesterday, so I will have to work extra hard today to make sure it does get done; cannot go two days without any, after all. I do feel tired this morning, and I am going into the office tomorrow. I have appointments for the surgery all morning on Monday, so I am going to take the day off–which means staying at the office after the department meeting to get all the things done for the next week that I would ordinarily do on Monday. I keep hoping the dentist will call about my dentures; it would be so awesome if I could get them on Friday, but surely they will come in by next week. I know things have slowed down with deliveries to New Orleans thanks to the visibility issues we’re having down here in the mornings. There’s a swamp fire in the East (which is why the whole city smells like burning rubber), and that mixes in with the heavy fog and visibility is relatively non-existent. Yesterday morning every bridge into New Orleans was closed except for the causeway, and there were some bad accidents before the bridges were closed. I-55 still hasn’t recovered from that insane massive pile-up in the same conditions last week, and I think it still closed southbound. As you cannot get into New Orleans from anywhere else in the state (other than Metairie and Kenner) without having to cross a bridge, you can see how closing all the bridges1 could cause delays in deliveries to the city–which is also probably why the grocery stores all look so picked over all the time.

I did manage to do some chores last night when I got home–finished a load of laundry and started another; emptied the dishwasher and reloaded it to run again, with another load waiting to go–and I made groceries on Carrollton before heading uptown to get the mail. My new copy of Chris Wiltz’ The Last Madam2 arrived yesterday, along with shaving accoutrement that I’d ordered, which was lovely. I think I am probably going to come straight home from work today. I’ve picked up the mail every day this week so far, it can wait again until Saturday when I take books to donate to the library sale. I really need to get back to work on the book and some of the other writing I am trying to get done before the surgery knocks me out for a while. I don’t know how much writing I am going to be able to do during the three-week post-operative hard cast to keep the arm immobile period, but in a worst case scenario, I should be able to sit in my easy chair and read and watch movies, right?

I watched a documentary last night on Youtube about how Egypt survived the Bronze Age Collapse (which is a period which really interests me–all the civilizations crumbled around the same time but we don’t really know why), and I also watched another episode of Moonlighting, and it just so happened that my all-time favorite episode was on deck, “Twas the Episode Before Christmas”–which also is one of my favorite series Christmas episodes of all time. This was the episode where the show fully committed to breaking the fourth wall regularly (they’d flirted with it before, with the occasional joke about the run time of the show or the viewers), but this is the episode where Miss DiPesto finds a baby in her apartment right before Christmas, and from thus the mystery was sprung. I also absolutely loved that the three FBI agents looking for the baby were all named King (hence the Three Kings looking for the baby at Christmas), and other little clever touches like that. It’s also an incredibly well-written episode, anchored by a truly beautiful and sensitive performance by Allyce Beasley as Miss DiPesto–who was robbed of an Emmy for this episode. This also, along with getting the new Donna Andrews Christmas mystery (Let It Crow! Let It Crow! Let It Crow!) and David Valdes’ new y/a romance Finding My Elf, had me thinking about Christmas again, and my weird bipolar feelings about the holiday, and also had me thinking about how little I’ve written about Christmas in my vast array of work; as far as I can remember there’s one short story (“The Snow Globe”) and one book (Royal Street Reveillon), but that’s really it. I’ve written other Christmas short stories, but have never shown them to anyone or wrote additional drafts, because they were gushingly sentimental, and I despise cheap sentiment. (Oh yes, years ago I edited an anthology of gay Christmas stories, Upon a Midnight Clear, which has been out of print for at least fifteen years, if not more.) I am going to try to read more Christmas-set books this year during the holiday season, much as I read horror the entire month of Halloween.

I’m also thinking I should write more about Christmas, and another Christmas book isn’t a bad idea, either.

I just wish I could get my mind to focus on something, you know? But I suspect that has to do with the looming surgery. This weekend, LSU plays Florida on Saturday night, and I am not sure I’ll watch much else–I’ll have the games on in the background but fully intend to get shit done around the house, and read, and write. I am not going to be able to do much around the house for at least three weeks, which has me a little concerned about the laundry–but I’ll cross that bridge when I come to it. One nice thing about football season is that once LSU is out of contention for anything, I don’t really have to pay much attention to anything else other than them for the rest of the season. I do love football, but not enough at this point to justify wasting an entire day watching games.

And on that note, I am heading into the spice mines. Have a lovely day, Constant Reader, and I am going to try to get some more blatant self-promotion out today, too.

  1. Ironically, I talked about how you always have to cross water to get into or out of New Orleans in Mississippi River Mischief; and here we are. ↩︎
  2. More research into gay prostitution and the history of sex work here. ↩︎

It’s Raining Again

Wednesday and it’s Pay-the-Bills Day again, hurray.

Last night’s sleep wasn’t as good as previous nights, but I do feel awake and rested this morning so that’s a good thing. I am also incredibly excited about my wagon, which i know is weird. I had a straight male co-worker look at it*, and sure enough, he was able to get the wheels attached properly. I stopped on my way home from the office to get the mail and thought, hey I had packages and my hands will be full, so let me use the wagon and it was marvelous. Clearly, I should have bought a wagon a long time ago–and it’s the right size to fit along the narrow walkway alongside the house. It’s actually going to make life so much easier for me now it’s almost scary, and it makes the most sense to actually keep it in the car–it’s out of the way, will always be there when I need it, and if I need it for anything else, well, the car is parked usually out in front of the house so it would be easy to get to. I am most pleased with the wagon, I have to say.

I’m also trying–not always successfully–to stay in control over my anxiety. I have all my pre-surgery appointments on Monday, so that’s when I am going to find out what the recovery is going to look like. I am taking unpaid leave from work (I don’t have near enough sick or vacation time to cover the time I need to be out, so here we are) which is going to be an issue I will deal with when it rolls around; but I do have the process started and I can get the documentation I need for Admin from those visits and turn everything in the following day when I go back to the office.

I wasn’t tired when I got home yesterday, but Tug was feeling lonely and needy, so I had to go give him a lap to sleep in for a while, and after watching another episode of Moonlighting and a documentary about Greek fire and the Byzantine Imperial Navy, I’d lost all motivation and was feeling tired and sleepy. I did nothing for the rest of the evening–nothing. I did go to bed around nine-thirty, and of course woke up just before five again this morning, but I think the body is beginning to adjust somewhat to the time change.

I got an unexpected royalty check (small, but I’ll take it gladly) in the mail yesterday along with my copy of David Valdes’ new Finding My Elf, which looks absolutely adorable, and I can’t wait to give it a read after the surgery. I am two books behind on my Donna Andrews reading, I need to read the new Lou Berney and Angie Kim novels, and there are any number of others I want to get to. I am assuming after the drugged haze of painkillers and so forth dies down afterwards, I’ll have lots of down time to read. I am going to have a rigid cast to keep the arm immobile for at least three weeks, and I am assuming that means limited options for doing things other than reading. I imagine typing one-handed is going to be incredibly frustrating, but it can be done. And during the drug fogs of those early post-surgery days, I can just reread things–like histories or true crime favorites or some Stephen King favorites (it’s been a hot minute since I reread Firestarter, for one, and ‘salem’s Lot and The Stand are always fun to revisit), or some of the other great favorites lying around the house.

I was also very happy to see that Ohio added abortion rights protections to the state Constitution as well as legalizing recreational marijuana–well done, Ohio!–and that Kentucky reelected their Democratic governor. There were some right-wing wins, but the great Blue Wave momentum from 2020 has continued, as well as the reaction to the Supreme Court’s overturning of Roe–congratulations, Federalist Society, your hand-picked Supreme Court majority has effectively destroyed the conservative movement’s electability for a generation. The Democrats needs to hit hard on abortion and the illegitimate Supreme Court–Mitch McConnell’s legacy, by the way, have fun being hated for the rest of American history, douchebag–going forward, and frankly, they need to put Howard Dean–who engineered the historic gains of the 2008 election cycle–back in fucking charge of the DNC.

I always said that abortion rights should be put on the ballot. This is the wedge issue that trumps (couldn’t resist) the Right’s religious zealotry and transphobia and racism.

But of course, they won’t learn the lesson that they’re unpopular and so are their policies and values–they’ll just see this in a paternal way: “clearly the voting public can’t be trusted, so we need to install authoritarianism for their own good.“

Yes, this is the same party that thinks they’ve successfully branded themselves as “true American patriots.” Fucking garbage is what they are.

And on that note, I am heading into the spice mines. Have a great day, Constant Reader, and I’ll be back to check on you with more blatant self-promotion later.

*ah, stereotypes. Alas, we have a lack of butch lesbians in the department now, so had to make do with a straight guy. C’est la vie.

Near You

Several weekends ago, I did an on-line panel for Outwrite DC. The moderator was John Copenhaver (whom you should already be reading), and my co-panelists were the always delightful and intelligent Kelly J. Ford, Margot Douaihy, Renee James, and Robyn Gigl. The video is actually up on Youtube, if you would like to watch it. John’s questions were insightful and intelligent (as always), and the conversation was marvelous, inspiring, and fun; there’s nothing I love more than communing with other queer crime writers (or any writers, to be certain), and I always try very hard to not monopolize panels because I do have a tendency to talk too much–especially if and when I get going on a topic I am passionate about. So, I thought it might be fun to take John’s questions and turn them into a long form interview, for thoroughly selfish and totally self-promotional reasons.

The panel blurb claims that “queer characters are riveting and necessary material for crime fiction and how those stories can shape (and perhaps reshape) the landscape of contemporary crime fiction.” Do you agree with this statement—and why do the stories of queer characters have the potential to shape crime fiction?

I completely agree with this statement. Queer crime fiction has a very proud history that was never really recognized or appreciated by the mainstream crime writers, readers, organizations, and conferences. That is changing for the better.

New blood is always necessary for any genre–horror, romance, crime, literary fiction–because genres tend to stagnate after a certain period of time. The cultural shifts of the late 1960’s and 1970’s echoed in crime fiction, for example; you couldn’t write crime in those periods without addressing all the cultural and social shifts; Ross Macdonald’s later novels are a good example of this. The 1970’s saw a lot of anti-hero books being written. The private eye sub-genre had grown quite stale by this time, which was when the women really moved in and gave it a shot of adrenaline–Marcia Muller, Sara Paretsky, and Sue Grafton blazed that trail, and revitalized a sub-genre that had kind of lost its way. Queer writers and crime writers of color are currently doing the same to the entire genre. Voices and perspectives we aren’t used to seeing are now getting into print and changing how we see, not only our genre, but each other. Crime fiction has always given voice to societal outsiders and outliers; queer people and people of color are the ultimate outsiders and outliers in this country. Who better to tell stories of societal alienation?

Why did you choose your sub-genre? How do you think the sub-genre has influenced the types of characters you write?

Well, I write in several different ones. Chanse MacLeod was a straight private-eye series; Scotty Bradley was more of an amateur sleuth/humorous series, but he does have a private eye license in Louisiana. A Streetcar Named Murder was a cozy, with an amateur sleuth heroine who gets caught up in a family mystery. I’ve also done young adult and “new adult,” whatever that is (it’s been described as ages 16-25), and Gothics with a touch of the supernatural. I tend to write things that I like to read, and I have a varied reading taste. I started writing the Chanse series because I wanted to do a harder-edged private eye series with a queer twist and set it in New Orleans. I didn’t know about J. M. Redmann’s Micky Knight series when I started writing Chanse; would I have done something different had I known she’d already covered the hardboiled lesbian private eye in New Orleans? We’ll never know, I suppose. Scotty was meant to be a lark; a funny caper novel and a one-off. And here we are nine books later…

As for Streetcar, I had been wanting to try a traditional mystery with a straight woman main character for a long time. When the opportunity presented itself, I jumped in with both feet. I like trying new things and pushing myself. Having to follow the “rules” of a traditional cozy was a challenge–especially because I have such a foul mouth in real life. I love noir so am working on two different gay ones at the moment.

Why do you think amateur detectives are appealing? Do you think there’s a reason queer characters often find themselves in the role of amateur detective?

I think it’s because we all think we’re smarter than the police? We enjoy seeing a character we can identify with figuring things out faster than the cops, especially without access to all the evidence, interviews, and forensics the cops do. Murder She Wrote has been off the air for about thirty years and yet the books based on the show continue coming out every year. If we start out in mysteries reading the juvenile series–Nancy Drew and the Hardy Boys and Judy Bolton and all the rest were amateurs, so we always cut our teeth in the genre with them to begin with. Scotty is basically an amateur, even though he has a private eye license he rarely uses; he and the boys never get hired (although they kind of do in the new one, coming this November.)

Let’s talk about place. Greg, your books take place in the South. Why is place important to the crime novel—why is it especially important to the queer crime novel?

Place shapes who we are–not just as queer people, but as people in general. There are similarities between growing up in a small town in the Midwest and growing up in one in the South, but the differences are very marked. I’ve lived all over the country–pretty much everywhere but New England or the Northwest–and always felt, as a Southerner (despite no accent and not growing up there) like an outsider. Couple that with being gay in a time when it was still considered a mental illness, and you have someone always on the outside looking in. But I have that Southern pull to write about the South–although many would say that writing about New Orleans and writing about the South are not the same; like me, New Orleans both is and isn’t of the South, and I feel that very strongly. I’ve written books set in California and Kansas, even one in upstate New York, but I very much consider myself a Southern writer.

Place is even more important in a queer crime novel because place shapes the queer people so much. As a writer, I think one of my strengths is setting and place, and I think that comes from being very much a fan of Gothics growing up. Gothics are known for place and mood, and I think those are two things I do well.

All of you write wonderfully flawed characters. Sometimes, as LGBTQ+ writers, we feel the burden of representation and the urge to write only positive LGBTQ+ characters as an attempt to undo history’s (the dominant culture’s) demonization of us. Unfortunately, that can be limiting—even flattening. Clearly, you’ve all struck a beautiful balance with your characters. Talk a bit about how you approached this issue.

The flaws, to me, are what make the characters seem real. Nancy Drew and the Hardy Boys always annoyed me because they were so perfect; no one is that perfect, and anyone that close to perfect in real life would be irritating and insufferable. I am am quite aware that I am flawed (one of my biggest flaws is believing I am self-aware because I most definitely am not), but I am not trying to be perfect; I just want to be the best version of myself that I can be. By showing queer people with all their facets and flaws and failures and blind spots, we’re showing the reader that we are human; despite what those who hate us say or claim, we are human beings just like everyone else, just trying to get through life and do the best that we can. The villain in my first book was a gay man–and the entire book was a commentary on how we, as queer people, tend to overlook flaws and red flags from members of our own community. Just because someone is queer doesn’t mean they are a good person–and queers with a criminal bent do exist, and often take advantage of that sense of camaraderie we feel with each other, especially when we don’t know the person well. I tend to trust a queer person more readily than I will a straight person, and that’s wrong–which is why I think we feel so much more hurt when queer people betray us.

Speaking of the demonization of LGBTQ+ folks … Ray Bradbury of Fahrenheit 451 fame said, “There is more than one way to burn a book. And the world is full of people running around with lit matches.” What do you think about the current tactics to ban queer books from schools, libraries, and even bookstores in places like Florida, Arkansas, and Texas? Why are they targeting queer books?

This is, I hope, the last gasp of the homophobes who’ve never updated their hate speech in over fifty years. What the hate group “Moms for Liberty” are doing and saying is no different than what Anita Bryant said and did in the 1970’s, what Maggie Gallagher and her evil co-horts at the National Organization for Marriage repeated, then came the One Million Moms…all too often it’s the cisgender straight white women who are the real foes of progressive politics who fight to uphold a bigoted status quo. They always claim they’re concerned moms worried about their children–but are perfectly fine with them being shot up at school; working in a meat factory on the night shift at thirteen (have fun in hell, Sarah Huckabee Sanders, when you get there and French-kiss your Lord and Master Lucifer); or shouldn’t have the right to vote…they know better than a child’s actual parents, you see, about what the child needs or wants. Maybe they should spend more time with their own children than worrying about everyone else’s? Phyllis Schlafly, queen skank of the conservative right, ignored her own family while she embarked on her crusade to strip women of their rights and autonomy–all the while shrieking like a hyena into any microphone nearby that she was fighting progress to save the American family while selling some Leave it to Beaver-like nonsense as reality. I always felt sorry for her gay son. Imagine that as your mother.

As for why, it’s about control and power. I actually respected Anita Bryant more, because she truly believed all the vile, horrible, unChristian things she said and espoused. Most of the others, including the unspeakably vile and disgusting Moms for Liberty, are working a grift for money, attention and power. Hilariously, they’ve sold their souls in the worst possible way in the guise of family, religion and God; if they’ve ever actually read their Bibles, they need to work on their reading comprehension skills as they are both apostates and blasphemers who will spend eternity doing the breast stroke in the lake of eternal fire. Hope they enjoy it.

Sorry your husbands and children don’t love you, but who can really blame them?

What are you working on next? What’s coming up?

I have a short story in an anthology called School of Hard Knox from Crippen and Landru (and somehow got a co-editor credit for the book with Donna Andrews and Art Taylor); Death Drop, the first in a new series from Golden Notebook press, drops in October; and the ninth Scotty comes out in November, Mississippi River Mischief. I am writing a gay noir, and may be writing second books for the new series I started with Crooked Lane last year as well as a sequel to Death Drop, and have a couple of short stories I want to finish to submit to anthologies I’d love to be in.

Alabama Pines

I sometimes wonder how dramatically different my life would be had my parents not migrated to Chicago when I was a child to provide us with a better life than we could expect in Alabama. I’ve always been somewhat grateful to them for this, because I can’t imagine or fathom what growing up in the rural South would have been like for teenaged gay Greg; Kansas was bad enough. But my heart will always have a place in it for the state I was born and where my parents grew up (and will both eventually be buried), and whenever I mine Alabama for fiction, it always comes up roses.

I was enormously pleased and flattered to be asked to participate in the Crippen and Landru anthology School of Hard Knox, and the last thing I was expecting was to get a co-editing credit. Art, Donna, and publisher Jeffrey Marks (a fine writer in his own right; check out his novels and short stories) did the majority of the heavy lifting; my contributions were more along the lines of sending an email cheering the others on or giving a thumbs up/thumbs down to a design question.

If you’d like, you can preorder a copy right here.

The premise of the anthology was that Father Ronald Knox, a scholarly clergymen, had come up with the ten commandments for writing crime fiction during the Golden Age, and each of us could chose a commandment and write a story breaking it. Obviously, it was pretty clear to me that Rule 2 was perfect for me:

All supernatural or preternatural agencies are ruled out as a matter of course.

And I knew precisely which story in the archive I could revise and rework to break this commandment and fit perfectly into the book, “The Ditch.”

I also cannot believe who I am sharing the table of contents with. Check out this talent!

Now THAT’S a table of contents! Not sure what I am doing there with these amazing writers, but I am most pleased to be there.

And this is how my story, “The Ditch,” opens:

I‘d just finished reading my book–The Hardy Boys, The Secret of the Lost Tunnel— and was reaching to turn off my bedside lamp when my phone chirped on my nightstand to let me know I’d gotten a new text message. I frowned. It was just past ten on a weeknight. Sure, it was summer, but Mom and Dad were strict about phone usage after eight o’clock. My orange-and–-blue Auburn Tigers clock, hanging just over my desk, read a few minutes past ten [on a weeknight]. I picked up the phone and looked at the screen. My wallpaper was a photo of me standing on a white sand beach on the Florida gulf coast.

I need your help. Come over! Please! Emergency!!!

It was from my best friend, Zane Tidwell.

I closed my eyes and exhaled.  Classic Zane, always sending desperate–sounding text messages expecting me to drop everything and rush right over. Everything was an emergency to Zane, from not getting his homework done to failing a test to not having any clean underwear to having a nightmare of some kind—all of these things qualified as emergencies in Zane’s brain. He worked himself up into quite a state over the stupidest things.

“The boy who cried wolf” was all Mom would say.

The problem being, sometimes it was an emergency, like that time he broke his arm when he was home alone, or when his mother fell and hit her head, or when his dog ate rat poison.

He always counted on me keeping my head on straight and not panicking and solving the problem for him. We’d been best friends ever since we were little boys in Bible study, and things had always been this way.

I was the calm one and Zane–well, Zane was a drama queen.

He knew I wasn’t even supposed to use my phone after eight, let alone leave the house after ten.

I typed out you know I can’t it’s too late to leave the house and if I get caught they’ll take my phone and ground me forever with my thumbs.

Please you have to come I don’t know what to do I am really in big trouble now PLEASE!!!!

I stared at the screen. In big trouble? What did that mean? But if the needle on the Zane drama-meter was going up, he wasn’t above calling me on the landline.

And that would send Mom and Dad over the edge.

I sighed. I was going to have to go over there.

“You’re more trouble than you’re worth, Zane Tidwell,” I whispered, typing out Be there soon and hitting send.

“The Ditch” is an Alabama story, of course, and has a teenaged protagonist (I’m not sure why I always write about Alabama from a young person’s perspective; probably because most of my memories are from childhood, I suppose) whose name we never really know. The ditch is actually a real place; my main character’s house is based on where my aunt and uncle lived–which is where we would visit–and about twenty or so yards behind the house was this ditch–or rather, what they called ‘the ditch.’ (I’d share a photo from Google Earth, but all it looks like from the air is a line of trees.) We used to spend a lot of time playing down there, and of course to me as a child it seemed enormous, but it’s probably a lot smaller in reality than I remember (everything seemed enormous to me when I was a child). I never knew what created the ditch, or why it was there, but it’s very similar to what I describe in the story, if smaller. There was all kinds of garbage down there–broken bottles, rusting cans, and so forth, so we were never supposed to go down there barefoot. I also remember that when we were in the ditch we weren’t visible to anyone not standing on the edge–which was a bonus for us as kids. The rope swing was also there (and now I think how fucking insane was it that adults let kids play like that? You could break your neck falling off that thing!) and I’ve also included the ditch in another, unfinished longer piece. There was something creepy yet idyllic about the place, and of course whenever I think about it as an adult it’s always what a perfect place to hide a body! What a perfect place for a ghost! and so on.

I wrote “The Ditch” originally for another anthology’s open call, but I knew when I finished it and turned it in it wasn’t going to get selected. (I was right.) I also knew it needed to be revised and the ending changed as well as some other things (minor but important) but had never gotten around to getting the revision done. So when this opportunity presented itself, I was going to use a different story but had some trouble with its ending and then was despairing when it hit me: you know how to fix “The Ditch” you just haven’t done it yet, so stop spinning your wheels with this one and do that instead, so I dug back into it and really had a great time with the revision. I’m very pleased with how it turned out, and I hope you will be, too!

(Ironically, this week the ending to the other story popped into my head, so I will be working on that this week, too.)

Luckenbach, Texas (Back to the Basics of Love)

Friday and it’s my work-at-home day. I have documents to check over for accuracy and completeness, and on-line trainings to work my way through. I don’t know if the handyman is coming by today–he painted and repaired the walls in the living room today, so it actually looks lovely in there, but he also left his tools and his big ladder…which I may try to use to reach the ceiling fans, if I get brave enough to risk climbing that high on a ladder. (Ladders terrify me. It may be because I fell off of one when I was a child headfirst onto concrete–I’ve heard all the jokes about head injuries already so don’t bother–and was hospitalized for several days.) The more rickety they are, the worse I feel about them. This one looks pretty professional and sturdy, so maybe it won’t be that bad. Not having level floors doesn’t help, either. (He just stopped by; he’s doing another coat and touching up the trim; I told him I’d work upstairs today, so I’ll write this and lug the laptops upstairs, and my phone and headphones so I can work upstairs.)

Last night wasn’t quite as productive as my first night alone; I was tired when I got home from work and running the errands (picked up my copy of Birder She Wrote by Donna Andrews, and I cannot write that title without commenting on how much I love it) and so didn’t get quite as much done as the night before. I did some laundry, and worked on the book some–I still have about another one hundred words to go on the chapter i was working on, before moving on to Chapter Five, which I’ll have to write off the top of my head, which is going to be a struggle, and I also have some other short stories to work on, and of course I can read. I did read a short story last night, another Alfred Hitchcock tale from My Favorites in Suspense, which was actually very timely, which is actually kind of sad. It was about two sentries in an unnamed time of war, guarding a crate which their enemy desperately wants. The sentries don’t know what is in the crate but all they know is it is dangerous. Eventually the enemy is near and they have to destroy the contents of the crate, which are strangely shaped box-like things, and there’s a piece of paper with five symbols on it. They don’t understand but they destroy the stuff anyway, and the final sentence of the story is one of the sentries remembering the symbols on the paper, BOOKS.

How very sad that we again live in a time where books (i.e. knowledge) are seen by some as the enemy.

But it’s Friday morning and the kitchen is already mostly under control. I’ve started another load of laundry, and I’ll do some other things around here once Sam has finished up for the day. I’ll do chore upstairs when I need a break from my work-at-home duties; and of course I have a television up there too, and Paul’s computer–which I could actually use as a television if I wanted to–can be utilized as well. I don’t have to leave the house today to go anywhere; I don’t really have to for the rest of the weekend if I don’t choose to (how marvelous!), and so I think once I have this all finished and posted, I’ll start lugging things upstairs that I will need–and it’s not like I can’t come down and get something I’ve forgotten. I slept very well last night–I feel better this morning than I have in I don’t know how long, rested and relaxed. I hope that bodes well for the rest of the day and my productivity, which isn’t exactly easy to do once you’ve gone out into the horrible heat of the day. It really does suck the life right out of you. I haven’t bothered to check what the temperature is going to be like today, either–I’m not entirely certain I want to know, frankly–but I can already tell it’s going to be another sweltering day where going outside makes your skin feel like it’s been cooked. Yay.

I hope to have a lovely weekend where I can just relax and get things done at a leisurely pace. I want to get some more writing done tonight–the writing lately has been lovely, and I am starting to feel like I am coming out of it again.

Oh! That reminds me. I am a guest over at Tara Laskowski’s “What Scares You Most” page on her website. If you’re not familiar with Tara, she is an amazing domestic suspense writer–her two novels currently in print are fantastic and the good news is a third will be out this December–and you should read her award-winning work. She’s also a lot of fun to be around and is, in the simplest of terms, one of the nicest and wittiest people in the business. (One of the reasons I love being a crime writer is the amazing people who are a part of that world.)

And on that note, I need to start lugging stuff upstairs so I can get out of Sam’s way and get to work. Have a lovely Friday, Constant Reader, and I’ll be checking in with you again later, most likely.

Southern Nights

Home alone. Look at that, I’ve not even been home for an hour and already I am sitting at the computer, writing a blog entry to document my first night sans Paul and pet in over twenty years. I got home from the office, emptied the dishwasher and reloaded it, did some laundry (one load in the dryer now, the other in the washer) and cleared off the kitchen counters, wiped down said counters, and then plopped my butt down at my desk, and here we are. I may work on the book a bit; I may not. I haven’t decided, but I think tonight, other than chores (which are mindless), I may just chill and relax and not use my brain very much and let it rest. I wasn’t terribly tired when I got home from work, either; I woke up before the alarm this morning and didn’t stay in bed–a miracle in and of itself–and had a pretty good day at the office. So, I may clean up computer files and do some organizing of my back-ups and files and things; I may just float around the apartment absently picking things up and wiping things down as I think about the fourth chapter of the WIP which is the one I am currently revising, and what precisely I want to do with the fifth chapter and where the story weaves itself next. It’s nice to simply sit and think sometimes, or to think while you do chores that don’t require much attention so your mind can wander while you do them. There’s a lot of clutter and mess in the Lost Apartment, and I’m kind of tired of it.

Everywhere I look there’s dust and clutter. This shall not stand!

This book that I’m currently writing again–because I actually started writing it sometime last year–is something I’ve had the kernel of the idea for now for quite some time. I’ve been wanting to write a straight-up gay noir novel now for I don’t know how long. I’ve had this particular idea longer than I have had the idea for Chlorine, for those of you who are anxiously awaiting that book to happen, and that’s kind of why I want to get this done. Chlorine will be a much bigger challenge than this one, and so I want to write this one as a kind of warm-up. It’s set in a city based on Tampa but isn’t Tampa, and I don’t know why that is but it feels right, like it belongs there for some reason. I haven’t been there in a very long time and the last time I was actually in Tampa (the day of the fateful Bouchercon Target run with my friend Wendy) I didn’t recognize anything and was completely lost–and I used to know that part of the city like the back of my hand. So the city I am writing about is Tampa, but as I knew it in the 1990’s, so it’s not Tampa. (There’s another noir I want to write that would be set in the same city but in 1992–and that one is going to be waaaay too much fun to write! But that’s a few years away–and both noirs are connected to each other.) The working title is Muscles, and Muscles is the name of a gym in my fictional city, that is managed by a has-been former pro wrestler in his later forties (injuries ended his career) who also happens to be gay. The gym is owned by a local criminal operation and money is laundered through it, while the main character is the public face of the gym. A very hot and sexy younger man who is fluid sexually and a bit of a sociopath (and yes, I realize I am playing into the trope of the evil bisexual, but you’ll just have to trust me) who is involved with the crime boss’ daughter and has used the main character to get ahead in the past has now done something–but the main character doesn’t know what it is–that has put his life in danger, and the main character has to decide whether he wants to try to help this stupid kid who’s in over his head but is also a user, or let the chips fall as they may while trying to stay out of it as much as he can…but of course, he can’t. It is soooo much fun to write, Constant Reader, and I’ve been very excited about working on it and the work I am doing on it. I am, of course, having constant doubts about things, but that’s what other drafts are for and I won’t be signing a contract for this until it’s in good enough shape to only need a vigorous and anal-retentive copy edit.

Today was also miserably hot again, but either I’ve gotten used to it or my entire body and soul have been numbed by it. It never gets to be over a hundred here; it was always rare before. Nineties, yes. Feels like over a hundred? Of course. But for the actual temperature to be over a hundred, and the feels like being in the hundred and teens? Mary Mother of God, no one asked for this. But I endured it today without much of a problem, and it was nice to just come straight home from work for the first time this week. My copy of the new Donna Andrews (Birder, She Wrote, which may just be one of the best titles of all time) arrived at the postal service today, so I’ll probably swing by there on the way home from work tomorrow and I’ll stop at a market so hopefully I won’t have to leave the house for the rest of the weekend, which would be oh so lovely.

I am probably being overly ambitious about what all I want to get done around here while Paul is away, but that’s always been my modus operandi, and that will also probably never change. What I can change is feeling like a loser for not getting everything on the list done. That’s self-defeating, which is also my modus operandi, and I need to do that a lot less going forward. I think part of the reason I am high achieving when it comes to productivity is because I always try to do more than any human being is capable of doing, but even getting half or part of it done is an accomplishment. I was looking at something the other day, I don’t quite remember what, but it was stats for this blog for some reason–which isn’t something I care enough about to actively seek out–but I was looking for my tags because I wanted to see if I had ever written about my book Dark Tide (I had) and at some point the list of how many posts I’ve done since moving the blog here whenever the hell that was, and was stunned to see it was in excess of two thousand? I think I moved the blog here in 2015, which was roughly eight years or so ago. So if I write one entry per day every day for eight years, that alone is 2920 entries. There have been days I’ve missed, of course, but there have also been days with more than one entry, and sometimes more than two when I am feeling especially bloggy (I just made up that word, you’re welcome), and assuming that every one is about 500 words (an underestimate, I’d bet), it comes out to…one million four hundred and sixty thousand words.

Holy fuckballs, seriously. And I never count the blog as writing for daily totals or anything.

Yikes?

And I think that’s a good place for me to cut this off. The loads in the dryer and the dishwasher are complete, so time to reload the dryer and dishwasher and fold some clothes.

Try not to let your envy consume you, Constant Reader.

Treasure Hiding

Monday and back to the office with me this morning, woo-hoo! Yesterday was kind of nice. It rained overnight and we had a couple of amazing thunderstorms in the morning which cooled everything off (for a quick moment) so I was able to cuddle up under my blankets with a cup of coffee and finished reading Megan Abbott’s amazing Beware the Woman (get a copy now and you can thank me later–I prefer cash), before doing some chores around the house and getting a handle on the kitchen/office mess situation. Yesterday afternoon around one I checked the temperature and it was a mere 78 degrees here. In July, in the afternoon. Madness, am I right? But it gradually started climbing again, as always, but it was a lovely respite from the brutality that has been this summer.

I also read a short story from one of the Alfred Hitchcock Presents, “Lady’s Man” by Ruth Chatterton, which I found interesting as it was nothing more than a little ghost story, set at a country home of none other than Noel Coward! I’m sure this must be the same Ruth Chatterton who’d been a film star in the 20s and 30s; a quick Google search answers the question that yes, the film star also was a writer! How delightful. The tale was told in a conversational style, as though Ms. Chatterton was making interesting conversation at a formal dinner, which made it really fun to read, even though the chills weren’t quite as pronounced as they were in some of the other stories I’ve read in these books. I do love revisiting these old anthologies and stories from another time.

I also spent some time going through my recent journals and marking pages with sticky notes that are applicable to things I am currently working on or thinking about going to work on. I usually brainstorm and think in my journals. It used to be just the act of writing something down was necessary for me to remember it later–which is why I never needed to really consult my notes in the Olden Days–but that is clearly no longer the case. Even writing stuff here in blog posts is no guarantee I will remember it later. It was also interesting because so much of my journal is just me scribbling, free associating names and titles then who the people are who got with both, quotes I like with attribution, and then the most bizarre things that literally make no sense at all; where did this thought come from? Is it original or did I see it somewhere and wrote it down? It’s always fun to see just how schizophrenic my creativity is when I don’t try to harness it. I actually wrote longhand in my journal last night while watching a documentary–I sometimes takes notes in case I want to blog about it later–and wound up writing several pages of a personal essay about my own experience going to Boys’ State in Kansas the summer I turned sixteen. (Yes, I was watching Boys’ State on Apple Plus, which was filmed at the Texas Boys’ State, which was interesting and well done, and a lot like I remembered it being all those years ago in a different state.) That evolved into me writing about always feeling like an outsider, observing from a slight remove, and went on for quite some time, rather indulgently, and I kind of was amused. There I was, feeling like I was creatively stifled and not able to write, yet writing in longhand in a journal, no less. It wasn’t fiction, of course, but it was still a creative expression, a free form exercise in stream of consciousness writing to see where my mind went–and inevitably, as always, I had to take the piss out of myself.

And that led to another page about my difficulties in taking myself seriously, and thus self-sabotaging myself and my career.

It truly is a wonder I have a career, or for that matter, even had one to begin with.

One thing that did come from that free form writing was a reiteration of something I think I may have posted here recently, that I should take just as much pride in my novels as I do in my published short stories. Sounds bizarre, doesn’t it, but my inner editor always wants to find and fix things in the novels, which inevitably leads to me wishing I could have another pass at it, and the reality is I will always feel like I should have taken another pass at a novel manuscript before it went to print. I need to get over that, or to at least keep it to myself and my journals rather than dragging my own work on my blog. I AM proud of my books, every single one of them, and every single one of them was the best book I was capable of writing at the time I wrote it. As I believe I continue to learn and grow as a writer the more I write, I will always think of my past work as something done when I wasn’t as mature a writer and was still learning because I am always learning. And hope to always continue learning and get better, not just as an author but as a person.

The older I get, the more I realize I don’t know, and how much I will never know. It’s kind of humbling, really.

I did decide what the next book I am going to write is going to be, and that’s a good thing. I was pretty sure of what it was going to be, because it’s in my head and needs to come out more than anything else at the moment–but there’s always something else nagging at the back of my mind saying write me write me! It has the potential to be very good, but I still need to figure some things out. I know how it starts and I know how it ends and I know the back story; I just don’t know the middle and how to get from Act One to the start of Act Three; I always struggle with the second act. I started writing it for a friend who was an acquiring editor, it was something I had been wanting to do for a while and he was interested in acquiring it once it was finished, or at least a first draft completed. So, while I was working on two other books at the same time, I was also taking one day every week and writing a three thousand word chapter and emailing it to him. I had completed Chapter Four and needed a transitional chapter that wasn’t boring or expository, so I had to put more thought into it than I had the previous four. This was last fall, when things started to get out of control in my personal life and with everything else, when I started falling behind on everything and my anxiety was out of control and I just didn’t have the headspace or creative energy to spare to figure out that chapter, so I stopped working on it.

But I never stopped thinking about it.

So, now I have to write it. I may continue to send it to him although he is no longer an acquiring editor, but he’s also a friend and I respect his opinion (he is remaining unnamed because I cannot say kind things about him publicly), so maybe I will. He was very encouraging, and sometimes I need a little bit of a push every now and then. I’ve also mentally worked out some of the kinks in those first chapters, too. I think it will be fun to write; I know I was enjoying it when I was working on it before, and it wasn’t like fuck, I don’t want to work on the structure and plot and meaning of this fucking thing, it was yeah, let’s figure this shit out.

That’s a good sign, methinks.

I’ve also decided my next read is going to be Kelly J. Ford’s The Hunt. I love Kelly and I love Kelly’s work, so I can’t wait to see what this is about. She has a truly masterful grasp of the rural South, and that voice! Oh, that authorial voice! She takes me back to my childhood summers in rural Alabama, shows those folks with a clear and unblinking eye, and then writes with language so beautifully and magnificently constructed that it makes me feel seen, home, and alive. I have some more fabulous books coming–what a summer for releases! New books to come from Laura Lippman and Angie Kim and Michael Koryta on top of all the treasures that have already been released this year? I’ve got Eryk Pruitt’s latest and Scott Von Doviak’s latest on their way, with a new Donna Andrews right on their heels. I need to stop slacking and get back to reading on top of everything else! Mon Dieu, how am I ever supposed to keep up?

There simply isn’t enough time in every day, is there?

There were also short stories in my journals–either the idea or the openings or an outline–that I’ve never transferred out or transcribed, which also needs to be done. God, there are so many short stories in progress…it’s daunting just thinking about it.

But it was a good weekend. I got some rest and I accomplished some things. I got better organized, with a short way to go, and am proceeding with plans to get everything back together again and start writing again, clearly and clear-headedly moving forward on something I’m really interested in writing, something I’ve wanted to write for a very long time–and it’s enormously satisfying knowing I am finally going to be working on it for real.

And on that note, I am heading into the spice mines. Have a lovely Monday, Constant Reader, and I may be back later. I tend to turn up like a bad penny here and there, now and again.

Essence

And here we are, on a very hot Saturday July morning in New Orleans, feeling rested and relaxed, which is becoming the norm and I have to say I really quite like it. I think some of it has to do with the lessening of stress and anxiety with the lightening of my over-all schedule; it’s nice not being constantly busy and always feeling guilty (anxious, stressed) about the things undone when I had to call it quits for the day from sheer exhaustion…and then of course that stress/anxiety/guilt made it impossible for me to sleep. I even cut back drastically on my caffeine intake during this period–cutting back to only three cups of coffee (which is probably still too much, really) and only one 16 ounce bottle of Coke per day. It’s helped my sleep some–and I am not willing to up my caffeine intake to find out, either–but I’ve been sleeping so well the last few weeks since I recovered from the trip that I am almost not afraid talking about it will jinx it…but the streak continued again last night. I’m not sure what the difference is–probably the reduction in stress and anxiety.

Finding out that my mother suffered from anxiety was also incredibly helpful. Finally, at age sixty-one, nearly sixty-two (less than a month away), I realize that I, too, suffer from almost crippling anxiety, but never realized it because it’s just my reality, if that makes sense? Everything stems from anxiety: the self-deprecation, the not taking my work as seriously as I should as well as being dismissive of it rather than proud, the issues with public speaking–all of it stems from anxiety. But that’s because it’s always been for me, I just figured, as one would, that it was normal and everything else has the same issues because that’s all I know. The Xanax has helped somewhat with reducing my anxiety or lessening it enough for me to be functional, and now recognizing that it is an actual chemical brain condition that I’ve had most of my life has opened my eyes in many ways, and I am trying to rewire my brain to accept and understand that anxiety causes me to want to self-destruct at times. I wish I had known this about twenty years ago, even forty, but would it have made a difference?

Yesterday wasn’t a bad day, really. I woke up later than usual (same this morning, staying in bed until just past seven thirty like a lazy slattern) and feel very rested. I spent most of the day going over forms doing Quality Assurance as well as did some on-line trainings. Once the work day was over, I repaired to my easy chair with my journal and scribbled notes in it for awhile until Paul got home from the gym. We watched this week’s episodes of Minx (smart adding Elizabeth Perkins to the cast for the second season), The Crowded Room, and Hijack, and moved on to some more Awkwafina is Nora from Queens, which is rapidly becoming one of my favorite half-hour comedies of all time (the queefing episode is a non-stop laugh riot, seriously).

Today I want to spend some more time on a kitchen cleaning project, in which I am cleaning out the drawers and the cabinets in the kitchen. Things tend to accumulate around here, and there are things that get tossed in drawers that I’ll never need, have never needed, and just held on to for some reason unknown to my conscious brain. I also want to work on the kitchen rugs (which never stay in place, ever) and the floors a bit more. I need to purge more books, too, and work on the kitchen. There’s a mess now because I cleaned out some things already and now that stuff is scattered all over the kitchen and I need to either find a place for it all or toss it, I also am going to spend some more time with Megan Abbott’s Beware the Woman over my coffee and perhaps a few more Alfred Hitchcock Presents short stories before I run today’s errands: groceries, mail, library sale to drop off books, and maybe a car wash. The tire pressure light has been on in my car since I drove home from Kentucky, but the heat has been so intense I’m not sure I’ve been able to get an accurate gauge reading of the tire pressure; I’ll probably swing by the gas station before doing any errands to try equalizing the pressure again. I also want to spend some time trying to write today–whether it’s a new book project, a revision of a short story, or even a brand new short story entirely (that Malice anthology deadline is approaching), but I want to get back into writing again, flex and stretch those creative muscles that have been so dormant for so long.

I got the table of contents for another anthology that I am appearing in, School of Hard Knox, edited by the amazing Jeffrey Marks and coming from Crippen & Landau. The author of the Father Knox crime series, back from the Golden Age, had come up with a list of ten rules that should never be broken by a crime/mystery writer; we each chose a rule and wrote a story breaking it. Mine was “no supernatural events or beings”; which was kind of perfect for me. I dug out an old Alabama/Corinth County story that had been moldering in the archives for decades called “The Ditch,” which I revised and rewrote and made much stronger. I was pleased when the story was accepted, and I was even more pleased to be told that the copy editor thought my story was “powerful.” (I’ll write more about the story, and the anthology, when its release date is imminent.) I also got paid for my story “Solace in a Dying Hour,” and cannot wait to get my contributor copies of This Fresh Hell. I don’t know why I get so much satisfaction out of selling and publishing short stories; but subconsciously I think of each sale/publication as another knife into the corpse of that wretched college writing professor who told me I’d never publish. Given how revenge and “I’ll show you” will always drive me to prove someone wrong about me, I’m starting to think that professor may have been a blessing? I’ve certainly proven him wrong with over forty novels, fifty short stories, and over twenty anthologies edited, not to mention countless articles, interviews, book reviews, and essays I’ve published over the years.

Anyway, here is the TOC for School of Hard Knox:

Introduction – Jeffrey Marks
Not Another Secret Passage Story – Donna Andrews
A Matter of Trust – Frankie Y Bailey
THe Dinner Partty – Nikki Dolson
The Intruder – Martin Edwards
The Ditch – Greg Herren
Dichondra – Naomi Hirahara
Baby Trap – Toni LP Kelner
The Stolen Tent – Richie Narvaez
The Rose City Vampire: An Accidental Alchemist Short Story – Gigi Pandian
Chin Yong Yun Goes to Church – SJ Rozan
The Forlorn Penguin – Daniel Stashower
The Island Boy Detective Agency – Marcia Talley
Ordeals – Art Taylor
Knox Vomica – Peter Lovesey

Look at those names. I am so honored and thrilled to be in an anthology enabling me to share the interior with these amazing, glittering names. More on this anthology as things develop–release date, cover reveal, etc. I’m very excited to be in this book, which will be a strong contender for Best Anthology short lists next year, as well as the stories making Best Short Story shortlists. I’m particularly proud of my story, to be honest. I think my metier in writing is writing about Alabama, to be completely honest. I know I am known as a “New Orleans writer,” and to be sure, my greatest success has come from writing about New Orleans, but I feel more drawn to writing about Alabama now that I am in my sixties. I am sure some of it has to do with losing Mom–somehow, it’s like writing about Alabama keeps me connected to her in some weird, complicated and twisted logic only my brain is capable of making, but it’s true.

I’ve also decided that I am going to submit to the Nashville Bouchercon anthology, even though I am not going. The theme, being Nashville, has to do with music, and its being edited by the incomparable Brendan DuBois, who is a fantastic short story writer and has found enormous success as a co-writer with James Patterson (I also like Brendan; we served on the MWA board together and he’s really a great guy). I would love to be edited and work with Brendan, and I think the story I’m going to write for it is “The Blues Before Dawn,” a period New Orleans story from before the first world war, which I’d been thinking about turning into a Sherlock Holmes in New Orleans story. That might make it stand out from the rest, one never knows. It also could get selected out by the anonymous readers who could be homophobic–it happens, and one can never be sure if your story isn’t good enough or if its homophobia–another joy of being a gay writer of gay stories.

And on that note, I am making another cup of coffee and going to read Megan Abbott for awhile. Have a great Saturday, Constant Reader, and I am sure to be back again later.

In Another Land

My flight was two and a half hours delayed yesterday due to the FAA system crash yesterday morning, which was, of course, tiresome. But I eventually got to board my flight, finished reading A Walk on the Wild Side (I literally finished it when we were taxiing to the gate, so perfect timing, and more on that book later), then collected my bag and got my car service into Manhattan. I checked in, went up to my room, and then had dinner as Connolly’s Irish Pub, where our waiter was stunned and delighted to see my LSU sweatshirt–he was a fan! (That happened again in the elevator on the way up to my room–who knew Manhattan was filled with LSU fans? You got to love it!) I got to have fish ‘n’ chips–they were marvelous–and then we walked back to the hotel and retired early. He ran me ragged today– lunch in Chinatown, and then we are having dinner with our friend Donna, who is also joining us for Hadestown, which I am very excited to see. I also need to write while I am here–hopefully I’ll be able to get some of that done Friday afternoon; I hate that I wasn’t able to keep my momentum going yesterday and knock out another three thousand words, but it was a day, wasn’t it? I got up at six yesterday morning, headed out to the airport around ten thirty, and then didn’t get to the hotel until six New York time. That’s an awful lot of me being out in public.

I also didn’t sleep great last night–first night in a hotel is always an adjustment; I hope tonight it will be a different story–and then was awakened (not really, I was awake but lying in bed with my eyes closed like I always do when I have insomnia) by a text from That Bitch Ford (Michael Thomas Ford, for those of you who are new; buy his books, they’re terrific) and so I washed my face and brushed my teeth and went down for coffee with him while he ate ($29 eggs!) and then we took the subway to lower Manhattan to walk around and see Chinatown (we’d planned on having lunch there all along, and we did!) and had a lovely time. Lunch was terrific, and it was fun catching up in person. We don’t think we’ve seen each other in person for going on ten years (I don’t think it’s been that long but I am not certain enough to argue the point), which is astonishing. We’re also two of the few from out “time” to still be around and writing all these years later, which feels very strange to me. We did a lot “I wonder whatever happened to–” and “who was that who–” types of conversation starters. Mike is one of the few people who is still a part of my life who knew me before I was published*; we met when he came to New Orleans to sign Alec Baldwin Doesn’t Love Me and Other Trials from My Queer Life, and we’ve kind of been friends ever since then. I know I interviewed him for IMPACT News back when I used to write for the local gay paper (shuttered since about 2002 or 2003, methinks) and since we both have the same horrible sick sense of humor…it was inevitable.

And now I am back in my room, exhausted, but with dinner plans at five with Mike and our friend Donna, and then of course we’re making a 7 pm curtain for the show. I’m not entirely sure what tomorrow holds for me; I think we have a breakfast date but I could be wrong, and I know in the late afternoon I start having plans again–and of course I will be tied up all day Saturday before flying home on Sunday. Thank God Monday is a holiday, so I can recover and rest and write and get things taken care of around the house. I had hoped to spend some time writing today but I am too tired, and I need to rest and relax before we get going for tonight. I’ve not been to a Broadway show in years, so am kind of looking forward to it. I know nothing about this show other than it’s the Orpheus myth (I think), so am really interested in hearing what the score sounds like.

And on that note I am going to lie down for a minute or two before I have to get ready for dinner. Till next time, Constant Reader!

*It’s very weird to me that so few people who knew me before I was published are actively still part of my life; I am still connected with people from past phases of my life but primarily through social media; I don’t interact with them very much outside of social media; and it’s not like I am ghosting the people from my past or anything; it’s just how life evolves. And most of the people we both knew back when we got started on this crazy journey into publishing aren’t around anymore.

(I Can’t Get No) Satisfaction

And here we are, on the final day of the year 2022. Happy New Year, I guess? It doesn’t feel like the year is turning, but everything has felt so totally out of whack since the 2020 Shutdown that it’s not a surprise, really. As I sit here bleary-eyed with my coffee trying to wake up for another thrilling day of writing and cleaning, it seems very weird to look back to a year ago at this time. I was on deadline then, too–and was way behind on that book, too (A Streetcar Named Murder, for the record), but other than that I don’t remember what my mood was like or what I was thinking about going into the new year. We were still in the midst of the pandemic (that hasn’t changed–what’s changed is it isn’t news anymore and everyone seems to be pretending it’s all over), and I know I wasn’t exactly going into 2022 thinking oh this is the year I’ll get the coronavirus! That did happen, and my ten-day experience with COVID-19 was bearable for the most part. I just had intense and severe exhaustion as well as the brain fog, which hasn’t entirely lifted. I still have no short term memory, and am struggling to remember things every day–which has made writing this book more difficult because I can’t remember small details and things that are kind of important. I also think being so scattered isn’t much help in that regard; I’ve never been able to handle getting a grip on things and have felt like I’ve been behind the eight-ball for the last three years, floundering and struggling to keep my head above water, and never confident that I had a handle on everything. It’s been unpleasant, really; I prefer to be better organized and to have things under some sort of manageable control, and this constant feeling that I am behind and will never catch up on everything has been overwhelming, depressing, and damaging.

I read a lot of great books this year–I was going to try to make a “favorite reads of the year” list, but as I went back through the blog for the last year looking at all the books I talked about on here, there’s no real way for me to quantify what were my avorite reads of the year. I managed to read both of Wanda M. Morris’ marvelous novels, All Her Little Secrets and Anywhere You Run; Marco Carocari’s marvelous Blackout; John Copenhaver’s The Savage Kind; Carol Goodman’s The Night Villa, The Lake of Dead Languages, and The Disinvited Guest; Ruth Ware’s The Death of Mrs. Westaway and The Woman in Cabin Ten; Raquel V. Reyes’ Mango, Mambo and Murder; Ellen Byron’s Bayou Book Thief; Rob Osler’s debut Devil’s Chew Toy; Mia P. Manansala’s Arsenic and Adobo; Kellye Garrett’s Like a Sister; Alex Segura Jr’s Secret Identity; Laurie R. King’s Back to the Garden; Tara Laskowski’s marvelous The Mother Next Door; James Kestrel’s Five Decembers (which would be a contender for favorite read of the year, if I did such things); and of course several Donna Andrews novels as well. I am forgetting some great reads I truly enjoyed this past year, I am sure–I will kick myself later for not remembering I Play One on TV by Alan Orloff, for one example–but it was a year of great reads for me. I know 2023 will also be a great year for reading.

I also watched a lot of great television this past year as well, and again, I won’t be remembering everything and will kick myself later. If nothing else, it was a year of some amazing queer representation on television; this was, after all, the year Netflix not only gave us the wonderful, amazing, adorable Heartstopper but the equally charming and adorable Smiley (which you should watch, absolutely). It was also the year where Elité continued, but the shine is starting to go off the show a bit. I was very vested in their Patrick/Ivan romance, which they ended in this last season with Manu Rios, who plays Patrick, leaving the show at the end of the season along with his two sisters (spoiler, sorry), which was dissatisfying. I am looking forward to seeing what else Manu Rios gets up to in the future…we also enjoyed 1899, Andor, Ted Lasso, Sex Lives of College Girls, Peacemaker, The Sandman, House of the Dragon, Ozark, and so many other shows I can’t possibly begin to remember them all this morning. But I have no problem saying that without question my favorite show of the year was Heartstopper. Even just looking at clips on Youtube, or those “Ten Cutest Moments on Heartstopper” videos, always makes me feel warm and fuzzy when I view them. The soundtrack for the show was also terrific, with some songs so firmly engrained in my head with scenes from the show (one in particular, Shura’s “What’s It Gonna Be” always makes me think of that scene where Charlie comes running after Nick in the rain to give him another kiss, which is what was playing in the background). Wednesday was another highlight, a surprising delight when I was prepared to have my hopes dashed, and The Serpent Queen was also a lot of fun. We also enjoyed The Bastard Son and the Devil Himself, but it was cancelled after its first season, which was disappointing.

Professionally, it was a pretty good year in which I had three book releases: #shedeservedit in January and A Streetcar Named Murder in December, with the anthology Land of 10000 Thrills, thrown in for good measure in the fall. I sold some short stories that haven’t come out yet, as well as some that did this last year: “The Rosary of Broken Promises,” “A Whisper from the Graveyard,””The Snow Globe,” and “This Thing of Darkness” all came out in anthologies this year, with “Solace in a Dying Hour” sold and probably coming out sometime in the spring. I also sold another story to another anthology that will probably come out in the new year as well, and I still have one out on submission. In what was probably the biggest surprise of the year, last year’s Bury Me in Shadows was nominated for not one, but TWO Anthony Awards (Best Paperback Original and Best Children’s/Young Adult) which was one of the biggest shocks of maybe not just the year, but definitely one of the highlights of my career thus far. I lost both to friends and enormously talented writers Jess Lourey and Alan Orloff respectively, which was kind of lovely. I had been nominated for Anthonys before (winning Best Anthology for Blood on the Bayou and “Cold Beer No Flies” was nominated for Best Short Story), but being nominated for one of my queer novels was such a thrill–and to have it nominated in two different categories was fucking lit, as the kids would say. The response to A Streetcar Named Murder was an incredibly pleasant surprise; people seemed to genuinely love the book, which was very exciting and cool.

I traveled quite a bit this year as well–going to Murder in the Magic City/Murder on the Menu, Left Coast Crime, the Edgars, Sleuthfest, and Bouchercon. I went to Kentucky twice to see my family, which further fueled my love of audiobooks for long drives–on both trips I listened to Ruth Ware on the way up and Carol Goodman on the way back–and also did some wonderful podcasts and panels on-line, which was nice. We didn’t go to any games this season in Baton Rouge, but in all honesty I don’t know if I can hang with a game day anymore–the drive there and back, the walk to and from the stadium, the game itself–I would probably need a week’s vacation afterwards!

College football was interesting this season, too. This season saw the reemergence of Tennessee, USC, and UCLA to some kind of relevance again; the slides of the programs at Texas A&M, Florida, Oklahoma, Auburn, and Texas continued; and LSU turned out to be the biggest surprise (for me) of the year. Going into the season I had hopes, as one always does, but after two years of consistent mediocrity (with some surprise wins both years) they weren’t very high. The opening loss to Florida State was a surprise and disappointment, but at least the Tigers came back and almost made it all the way to a win. The blowout loss to Tennessee at home was unpleasant, certainly, as was the loss at Texas A&M. But LSU beat Alabama this season! We also beat Mississippi, so LSU was 2-2 against Top Ten teams this season–and I would have thought it would be 0-4. And 9-4 is not a bad record for a transitional year, with a new coach rebuilding the program. And LSU beat Alabama. The Alabama game will undoubtedly go down as one of the greatest Saturday night games in Tiger Stadium. It was incredibly exciting, and I still can’t quite wrap my mind around it or how it happened. It certainly shouldn’t have; LSU was simply not an elite-level team this past season, but what a job Brian Kelly did coaching in his first season in Baton Rouge. Did I mention that LSU beat Alabama this year? (And one really has to feel for Alabama, in a way; they lost two games by a total of four points on the last play of each game. Four. Points. That would probably be what I would call this season for Alabama: Four Points from Greatness. The LSU-Alabama game this year is definitely one of those that gets a nickname from the fan base, I am just not sure what it would be. The Double Earthquake Game? (The cheers when LSU scored in overtime and then made the two point conversion registered on the campus Richter scale) The Conversion Game? I don’t know what it will be named for all eternity, but it was an amazing game. I do think it also bodes well for the future for LSU. Will both LSU and Tennessee (which also beat Alabama for the first time in like fifteen years) be able to consistently compete with Alabama now? Has Georgia taken over as the SEC behemoth? Has the Alabama run ended? I don’t think so–they have an off year where they lose two or three games periodically (2010, 2019, 2022)–and they could bounce right back. next year and win it all again. You can never count them out, even in their off years.

As for the Saints, they swept Atlanta again this year, and that is enough for me.

I did write a lot this year, even though it didn’t seem like I actually did while the year was passing. I also worked on Chlorine and another project I am working on throughout the year, as well as the novellas, and of course, I was writing short stories and essays for much of the year. I also read a lot more New Orleans and Louisiana history, and I had tons of ideas for things to write all year long. I did make it to the gym on a fairly regular basis at the beginning of the year, but then it became more and more sporadic and after my COVID-19 experience, never again. I also injured my arm a few weeks ago–when I flex the bicep it feels like I have a Charley horse, so not good, but it doesn’t impact my day to day activities. I also had my colonoscopy at last this past year–the prep was horrific, and I am really dreading doing it again at sixty-five, should I make it that far.

Yesterday was a nice day. I was exhausted, and after my work-at-home duties were completed I did some chores–laundry, dishes–and I also spent some time both reading (A Walk on the Wild Side) and writing. I also watched the Clemson-Tennessee Orange Bowl last night before Paul got home from his dinner engagement and we watched a few more episodes of Sex Lives of College Girls. Today I am going to read a bit this morning with my coffee before getting cleaned up and diving headfirst back into the book. Paul has his trainer today and usually either goes to the gym to ride the bike or to his office to work for the rest of the afternoon, so I should be able to have some uninterrupted writing time, which will be lovely. And on that note I am heading into the spice mines. Have a happy and safe New Year’s Eve, Constant Reader, and I will check back in with you later.