Tag: Fire Island

Judy in Disguise

Judy Bolton was never quite as popular as Nancy Drew, but she has some very loyal and very partisan fans. Unlike Nancy Drew and the Hardy Boys (and perhaps some other Stratemeyer Syndicate series), there was only one writer for the entire length of the series, Margaret Sutton, and she wrote about her native Pennsylvania–the state is never mentioned in the series, but it’s close enough to New York for a short train ride to take you into the city, and it was pretty clear she had set the series in a fictional town in her native state. The series was also unique amongst kids’ series in that Judy aged–she was fifteen or sixteen in the first book, The Vanishing Shadow, eventually graduated from high school, and got married. The grandmother she is staying with at the farm in Dry Brook Hollow in that first book eventually passes away and leaves the farm to Judy, who moves into the old farmhouse with her husband and former high school boyfriend, Peter Dobbs.

I discovered Judy Bolton at Bargaintown USA, which eventually became Toys R Us. Their book wall, which was the back wall of the store, had every kids’ series in print at the time. I just stared at the wall in wonder, wondering how I would ever choose just one book out of the vast array of choices. I liked the title The Vanishing Shadow, and my parents–eager to get me to read about boys instead of girls–didn’t notice it was a “girls” book because the spine was green–Nancy Drew was a very bright yellow, and they’d trained themselves to watch out for those telltale yellow spines in time to negate the purchase. Like most kids’ series, the Judy Bolton books had never been revised or updated; they weren’t Stratemeyer Syndicate books and had a single author, for one (Sutton always felt Grosset & Dunlap “favored” Nancy Drew in marketing over Judy Bolton; and that her series would have been just as successful with the same marketing Nancy got), and so this initial book, originally published in 1932 (!!!) seemed a bit old-fashioned. I was also a bit surprised because Judy was kind of unpleasant and unlikable. She was especially mean and vicious to her younger brother Horace–who was timid, shy, and weak; dismissed as a coward by everyone including his sister–and she was incredibly bored, staying at her grandmother’s–which I could also related to as I often was bored when I spending the summer at my grandmother’s. Judy and her family actually lived nearby in the small city of Roulsville, which sat in the shadow of an enormous dam and reservoir. Judy overhears some suspicious characters talking about a weakness in the dam–and so she entertains herself trying to figure out what’s going on. There’s a very exciting climax where the dam itself does rupture, and Horace rides a horse into town to warn everyone to flee for safety, becoming in the process the hero of the Roulsville Flood. This surprising act of heroism for the formerly “cowardly” Horace has a strong effect on him, and he becomes a completely different person from then on–strong, confident, courageous. Judy also solves her mystery, involving shoddy construction of the dam and corruption, and all’s well that ends well–except the Boltons are now homeless.

My junior high school had a lot of the kids’ series in its library, and I checked out and read as many as I could–not just Judy Bolton, but other series like Biff Brewster and Ken Holt, that I also enjoyed (more on them later)–and in the second book of the series, The Haunted Attic, the Boltons move into an old but beautiful, reputedly haunted mansion in the nearby, much bigger than Roulsville city of Farringdon. Judy’s transition from her old high school to the new one in Farringdon brought its own set of challenges; her adventures in the first book also made Judy grow up some and become a little less self-centered and more concerned about helping other people, with a strong sense of right and wrong. The Judy Bolton series was kind of amazing and vastly different from the others in that Judy not only grew and evolved, but so did her friends. The books also tackled social issues, like class and snobbery and mean girls, while Judy also solved mysteries. She became friends with a group of kids, with both wealthy Arthur Farringdon-Pett and Peter Dobbs interested in her; Arthur’s sister Lois became Judy’s friend, but Lois’ other best friend Lorraine Lee was a bitch who was extremely jealous of Judy–but rather than dragging her for the filth she is, Judy feels more sorry for her than anything else, and is always kind to her.

One of the other things I really liked about this series–besides Judy aging and growing and changing from a teenager to an adult married woman over its run–was often Judy’s mysteries involved reuniting long lost children with their families. The Haunted Attic put her squarely in the sights of a criminal gang, who had a sad teenaged daughter Judy took pity on and befriended…eventually discovering she was actually Peter Dobbs’ sister, who everyone thought had died at birth. Judy and Peter eventually married, and they wound up living in her grandmother’s house in Dry Brook Hollow, which she inherited when her grandmother dies (off camera). Another thing I liked about the series was its careful attention to continuity–many of Judy’s later adventures were tied to the Roulsville Flood, or have long-running characters like Holly Potter who eventually have a mystery that needs clearing up by Judy; she and Peter also took in a little girl named Roberta who lived with them for several volumes before Judy finds out the truth about Roberta’s past and reunites her with her parents (The Clue of the Stone Lantern). Judy even deals with racism against Muslim-Americans in The Search for the Glowing Hand––which was pretty fucking far ahead of its time for the 1960s, don’t you think?

As you can see, advertising played up the fact that Sutton based her stories on real places and real events.

The last Bolton case written by Sutton herself was The Secret of the Sand Castle, which, of all things, takes Judy to FIRE ISLAND to solve a mystery. I know, right? When I finally got a copy of it (in very good condition, and far cheaper than I would have ever guessed it would be) I wasn’t surprised to read that Judy encountered no partying gay men, never wandered into the Pines at night by mistake, and so on. It was also set in the off-season, so there was no one else–or not many people, at any rate–out there on the barrier island with her.

I also liked that Peter, Judy’s husband, became an FBI agent after they were married, and sometimes Judy inadvertently got involved in one of his cases. Her cat Blackberry, originally gifted to her as a kitten in volume one, is “loaned” to Congress to catch mice in the basements of the Capital when she and Peter are living in Washington briefly because of his work–The Whispered Watchword involves a conspiracy against the US by a foreign enemy–before they return back to Dry Brook Hollow. Peter is also often away (gosh, sounds like Frank and Colin, doesn’t he?) so Judy is usually on her own when a mystery comes across her path. I also liked that Judy didn’t just become a wife when she married; she continued having adventures, even if she is a bit more deferential to Peter than I would have liked, but marriage neither changes her nor makes her settle down into domesticity, the way an actual baby would have; that was my biggest fear reading the series…that Sutton would eventually make her a mother. But that wouldn’t have flown with the audience or the publisher, I suppose (SEX! OMG JUDY AND PETER HAVE SEX!), so that’s why Roberta came along–to give Judy that “normal” look of having a child to look after now that she’s a wife.

Fans completed some of Sutton’s unfinished manuscripts after she died; while I am sure they are marvelous stories, maybe someday I’ll have an interest in reading either of them. But it’s hard for me to read someone else’s take on a long-running series; it just feels wrong to me, somehow and I know it’s irrational. I did like Ace Atkins’ take on Spenser, and I am going to read Alison Gaylin’s take on Parker’s Sunny Randall. (I also used to not like watching movies that were subtitled, either, so…change is possible.)

It would be very cool if someone could update this series, but I’m not sure if it can be done. The first book came out almost a hundred years ago (!), and times have changed dramatically since then. I always thought if I wrote a girl detective, she’d be a cross between Judy Bolton and Trixie Belden.

Walk a Thin Line

Tuesday morning with dark pressing against the windows. When does this hateful Daylight Savings Time shit happen this year, anyway? The extra hour of sleep in the fall is always lovely and nice; it’s the paying it back in the spring that totally sucks. Ah, well. I slept well last night and feel fairly wide awake (I actually wrote wild first; wild awake sounds like it should be a thing, really) and am looking forward to another exciting day at work. I recently had my job changed a bit–I got a substantial raise and a new job description, that I have to sign today at the office–and the new stuff goes into effect with the start of the new pay period on Friday. It was very nice–it was the meeting I had yesterday–to have years of dedication to my employer acknowledged and appreciated (I knew I was appreciated, but it’s nice to get financial and employee level recognition as well). It will help me get these bills paid off faster as well, which is kind of nice. I’ve not made enough progress on that front as I would like this year, but it looks like I’ll get further ahead by the end of the year.

I also wrote about 1677 words yesterday; the first work on the Scotty book in weeks, and yes, it was literally along the lines of pulling teeth. The gears had rusted and were most definitely creaking as I tried to get them moving yesterday. It wasn’t easy, but I am hoping that getting started will help grease the wheels somewhat and will help me get more done, bit by bit, day by day, until it is finally finished. I always, every time, forget that things don’t have to be perfect the first time through–even though time is running out already–and I am trying to not to let the impending deadline make me crazy.

We watched a few more episodes of Your Honor last night, which completely changed course and direction in a completely unexpected way in last night’s two episodes; I’m not really sure what is going on with the show–it’s almost like they took on a new show-runner and writers after episode 4. It was a significant change in tone and direction, and a new character was added out of nowhere in a weird transitional method of getting to the new direction/new story. It’s clever enough–although we did have to laugh because (and yes, it’s a New Orleans thing) that he was trying to drop off the extortion/blackmail money during the Red Dress Run, which is always on a Saturday in August which means it’s hellish outside, temperature wise…but on the show, it was clearly a weekday for some reason because he went to the bank first to remove the money, and no one was hot or sweating and it looked kind of chilly out, to be honest. (For the record, I put the Red Dress Run into Garden District Gothic as the opening sequence; Scotty taking Taylor to his first Red Dress Run.) But it’s entertaining enough, and yes, I am aware how snooty we who live here are about shows and movies set and filmed here but not in a bad way; I personally just get amused by the bizarre geography they use for them. But like I said yesterday, it’s about shots that reflect New Orleans to the viewers, and to do that sometimes you have to create a new geography that makes no sense to us, but works for everyone else.

There has been an endless on-going thing on social media over the last few days about Billy Eichner’s tweets about his disappointment in his new film Bros not performing as well at the box office as he had hoped and the studio had projected; basically, it boiled to him saying straight people didn’t show up for a gay movie. I get his frustration as a queer artist; queer authors could all easily say we would be more successful if straight readers bought our books, too; it’s not like a lot of straights show up for us, either. But…I don’t know how true that is. I don’t know who reads my books or who my core audience is; I assume it’s gay men, with a smattering of lesbians and straight women thrown in for good measure, based on social media interactions and responses to my blog posts. (And yes, I know I am being heterophobic in assuming there are very few, if any, straight male readers of my work. I am okay with this completely because I really don’t write with straight men in mind, to be honest.) Again, I get the disappointment–and some people on Twitter do miss the point entirely; Bros was the first major studio film release about gay men starring gay men and employing almost entirely queer people behind the scenes, which does make the movie groundbreaking in some ways (bringing up the success of other gay films from big studios is an apples to oranges thing; since most of those were straight written, straight produced and starred straight people in a queer film targeting to straight people). So, yeah, I get why Billy Eichner is disappointed…I don’t know that I would have taken the disappointment to social media, though. (Oh, I know the answer to that, who am I fooling? You never take disappointment to social media unless you enjoy feeling like a carcass being picked apart by vultures.) I’m not a particular fan of his; as someone whose persona also is drily funny sarcastic bitch, he always seems angry to me, and anger makes me uncomfortable rather than amused. I’ll watch the movie when it’s streaming, but I do think the lower box office than predicted might have to do with people not being comfortable going back to a movie theater just yet; and while I recognize this as an assumption, I feel pretty safe in concluding that the Venn diagram of people who would tend (or be interested potentially) to see a gay rom-com in the theater and those who are still taking COVID precautions seriously is pretty much one big circle, you know? I think Fire Island did really well for Hulu over the summer, and we don’t know that Bros is a flop yet, either. I don’t see the underperformance of Bros as necessarily the death knell of queer cinema from the major studios, either; yes, it won’t help the next film get produced but I don’t think it will stop the next one from being produced. And for the last time, it’s impossible for any queer film to represent every queer experience in the world because every queer person has a different experience. No one film (or television show, for that matter) can adequately represent the entire community, and we need to get past that kind of thinking–was Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? representative of all straight married couples?

I don’t know why we hold queer films (and television series, for that matter) to higher standards than we do straight films and series, but probably because there are fewer of them, and less still that are written, produced and star actual queer people. My usual issues with queer film isn’t that they aren’t representative, but mainly because they just aren’t very good (the few that are good are quite marvelous, actually–I will always hold that the best gay movie is Beautiful Thing)…but that’s a discussion for another time.

And on that note, I am going to head into the spice mines. Have a lovely Tuesday, Constant Reader!

Enchanted

Thursday and I am really looking forward to the three day weekend.

And yes, I am well aware of how lazy that makes me sound but I don’t care.

I slept relatively well last night. Paul got home late, so we watched an episode of Why Are You Like This? which is funny and interesting at the same time–I’m also not entirely comfortable with finding it funny, to be honest; the characters are all so blatantly awful in so many different ways that I am sure I would not be amused by them in reality–but there you have it. Guilty as charged. It was also incredibly hot yesterday; the heat index was well over a hundred for most of the day, and when I got in the car after work, it was 100 degrees, according to the temperature gauge in the car. I went to get the mail (my copy of the Fire Island book arrived) and stopped at the bank before heading home. I was, as expected, rather tired when I got home and Scooter demanded a lap to sleep in, so I collapsed into my easy chair and took the evening off for most of the night. I did write for a little bit on “Never Kiss a Stranger”–which I am starting to develop imposter syndrome about (how I’ve missed that!)–and I am actually hoping to get it finished this weekend over the course of those lovely three days off, and maybe even get started on Scotty #8.

Number Eight. Wow. Who knew?

I really need to focus.

The heat hasn’t really helped much in that regard, and yes, I know New Orleans is always hot and humid, but this year it’s much hotter and more humid earlier than it usually is–or else my memory is completely shot. I don’t ever remember having heat advisories in June before, or it getting to be 100 degrees this early–remember, summer doesn’t even start until June 21st, so yeah, it’s still spring with the heat index hitting over 100 daily for the past week.

Heavy heaving sigh.

I was thinking last night (always dangerous) while Scooter slept in my lap about how much queer rep there has been on my streaming services lately, and it has definitely been a mixed bag. I kind of want to watch Fire Island again, to see what I missed the first time (a second viewing of anything like this is practically de rigeur for me, especially if I want to write about it) and that led me to thinking about Elite and Heartstopper again, as well as Young Royals, Sex Education, and Bonding, to name just a few. I was thinking about Heartstopper last night–which is how this entire line of thought began–and how adorable the show was; and part of that was because the actors were actually age-appropriate for the roles; and that changed how I perceived the show–I kept thinking oh these kids are so cute, whereas in shows where the teenagers are played by actors in their early to late twenties–which always seems to be the case, so that the drinking and drugs and sex in shows like Elite or Gossip Girl doesn’t seem as distasteful or wrong as it would be if they were actually using kids (one of the few times in television/film history where an actual teenager played a teenager who was having sex and getting into all kinds of trouble was Genie Francis as teenaged Laura Webber on General Hospital back in the 1970s) who were age appropriate; there’s an entire essay about older young adults playing sexualized teenagers and “who’s grooming who” in our culture that it struggling to take form in my mind…which is yet another reason I want to rewatch some of these shows.

I’ve also been thinking about Queer as Folk’s reboot since we binged it last weekend, and I am still not decided on what I think about the show; it might bear a rewatch as well so I can be certain that I am remembering things correctly and/or didn’t miss things that were relevant to the characters and the story being told…but I will say again–New Orleans looks beautiful on the show.

And on that note I am heading into the spice mines. Y’all have a great Thursday, and I will check in with you again tomorrow.

Groove Me

And now it’s Sunday in the Lost Apartment, and I didn’t even go outside yesterday. Seriously, and it was lovely. I spent yesterday morning doing some organizing and planning and chores, and then dove into my edits. I emerged from the edits, bleary-eyed and more than a little bit tired, about five or six hours later and adjourned to my easy chair for some “be Scooter’s nap lap for a while” time and watched some videos on European royalty and some who were royalty-adjacent (Ivan VI of Russia, Diane de Poitiers, Elisabeth-Charlotte d’Orleans, duchess of Lorraine, and so forth) until Paul came home, and we streamed for the rest of the evening, which was nice and relaxing. Today I am going to finish the edits so it can be polished tomorrow before turning it in once and for all–huzzah!–and then the rest of the week I will undoubtedly have the “just finished a book for good” hangover and won’t get much else done. But I am already starting to feel that release of having a book finished; and my stress/anxiety levels have gone down significantly. I slept very well last night, which was also very nice and lovely, and I hope to do so again tonight–it’s been really nice getting all this sleep lately.

We watched Fire Island last night on Hulu, and I wasn’t horribly disappointed by it. I’ve seen few gay films–written, directed, produced and starring gay men– that weren’t disappointments; even the ones that come from traditional Hollywood inevitably I don’t care for very much. I never made it through Call Me by Your Name, for one example, and do not get me started on Philadelphia, In and Out, and To Wong Foo. But I enjoyed Fire Island, despite thinking I wouldn’t. I’ve actually never been to Fire Island–although I was invited to go for my birthday one year; their big Morning Party was actually on my birthday–but I was timid and shy and didn’t know how to get there from Tampa, because it involved trains and ferries and things, and I was also always broke in those days, and so I ended up not going. I’ve regretted it ever since…especially when I was writing Wicked Frat Boy Ways, which had a segment actually set on Fire Island. Anyway, I am digressing. I went into Fire Island kind of expecting it to be the same old gay story about Fire Island–I’ve read enough gay literary fiction either written or set in the 1970’s to have formed a strong impression about Fire Island–but the movie wasn’t what I was expecting. I was kind of expecting…I don’t know, another movie about beautiful and rich gay men with ripped bodies that didn’t go very deep, even if it was billed as a rom-com (I mean, a rom-com set on Fire Island?). But it was a lot more than what I was expecting; the characters the movie followed (a group of friends who all bonded and became kind of a family when they all worked at a horrible restaurant in Manhattan with “bottomless Mimosas”–that flashback scene might only be hilarious to former waiters, but it made both Paul and I laugh knowingly) were not rich for sure; the only reason they can afford to be there is they have a friend–a lesbian who won a lawsuit and got a shit ton of money and bought a house on the island, played by Margaret Cho–and there’s definitely some class issues played out in the movie, as well as issues of race. It was also nice to see some frankness about gay male sexuality. I won’t spoil the movie, but it wound up being deeply satisfying, had some really funny moments, and Bowen Yang is the emotional center of the movie–and he kills it. Fire Island may not be for everyone, but Paul and I really enjoyed it a lot more than we thought we would, and the island itself looks beautiful. I am far too old now to “do” Fire Island…but you can’t always do everything you want.

My, how philosophical I am after one cup of coffee this morning.

We also started watching a Spanish language show called Merli: Sapere Audi (Dare to Know), which is a sequel to a show called Merli about a philosophy teacher and ran for three seasons. This show focuses on one of the teacher’s best students, Pol, who is now studying at the University of Barcelona and is played by a really beautiful young actor named Carlos Cuervas, Pol is still in a relationship with Bruno, the son of his old teacher, and is still struggling to come to terms with his bisexuality (or homosexuality; I am not sure which it is), while developing a new relationship with his philosophy professor, who is played by Maria Pujalte, whom we have seen in numerous other shows; she is always great. It’s entertaining enough, and we’ll probably go ahead and finish it tonight. (I laughed because the opening shot of the show has Pol in the shower, with that shot being a close-up of his lovely ass. “Spain understands the gay market,” I laughed as we watched.) I’m not sure what we’ll watch when we finish this, but there are five more episodes so that will be a question for later this week, no doubt…I think the new, New Orleans based and filmed Queer as Folk will be dropping soon on HBO MAX, and we’ll probably watch that and Obi-wan Kenobi on Disney.

And we still haven’t watched all those Marvel shows, either.

I’ve been thinking–always a dangerous thing–lately about trying my hand at writing a gay romance. I’ve always avoided the genre because of it’s commitment to heteronormativity (which actually came up during Fire Island, which was kind of a knowing wink at the audience), but even before watching Heartstopper (I actually think Patrick/Ivan on Elité was when I first started thinking about it.). I even (of course) have a title for it, and was thinking it might be kind of fun to bring Jake from Bury Me in Shadows back and toss him a romance sequel. (I think my next Alabama may focus on his boyfriend Beau from Bury Me in Shadows….if I write another Alabama book. One never really knows.) But writing another book about Jake, or one about Beau would be kind of lazy since I already created them….but I also couldn’t write another book set in Corinth County and not acknowledge Beau…who was a cousin of the main character from Dark Tide, which did get mentioned. I don’t know. But as I put the finishing edits on my cozy mystery, I am thinking it might be fun and interesting to try something–a romance novel–that is completely outside of my wheelhouse. Sure I have to write Mississippi River Mischief, Chlorine and another project first; there’s all those novellas I have to finish as well as all those short stories; and of course, the essays.

Christ.

No wonder I am so tired all the time…

My goal has been to write a first draft of Chlorine in May, and then a first draft of another project (Muscles) in June, spend July writing the short stories and novellas, and then move on to Mississippi River Mischief in August. I’m now thinking–inspired by these edits–that what I really need to do is spend the rest of this month working on the short stories and novellas as well as getting MRM started; it would be great to have a first draft of MRM completed by August 1, and then spend the next two months writing first drafts of the other projects before returning to MRM to finish by December 1. I think that’s not only workable but doable, but I also have to stay focused on the goal and not allow myself to either get lazy or distracted. I really also want to get back down to 200 pounds before Bouchercon; that may not be entirely realistic, but I can at least change the way the weight is distributed on my body somewhat by then–although back in the day, I generally started working on my Decadence body (ah, the days when it mattered so much to me to be in shape for certain weekends of the year!) around June…but my body has aged and changed since those days, and the metabolism has completely slowed down. But my body also craves exercise and stretching–I may do some stretching when I finish writing this, and before I start putting stuff away and cleaning prior to diving into the edits–and it certainly cannot hurt for me to start trying to make it to the gym three times per week again.

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 morning.