Tag: Florida panhandle

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Saturday! Sparky didn’t let me sleep as late as I would have perhaps preferred, but I am awake now and slurping down coffee and having a lovely morning thus far. I slept really well last night, which was nice, but mostly spent my evening after our Costco run (it was bizarre; we ran into two people we know there, which rarely, if ever, happens anymore) watching videos on Youtube about a) the 1970s for another project and b) World War II (for obvious reasons) before I fell asleep in my chair and had to finally go upstairs to bed. I did get a lot of chores done yesterday, which was lovely; the dishes are all done, and there’s a load of clothes in the dryer that also need to be finished and folded and put away. I have to run to the mail today, get gas, and make some groceries (while having others delivered1), and the floors need to be vacuumed, but other than that, I have a nice restful day at home planned. LSU plays game one of the National Championships tonight against Coastal Carolina at six tonight, but isn’t anything college baseball related going to seem anti-climactic after the ninth inning of the Arkansas game the other night? Probably.

I decided to read The Crying Child by Barbara Michaels as my next reread; I did some poking around on-line about Myra Breckinridge and apparently I missed a lot on my two previous reads of the book, so I am going to have to spend more time with it when I read it, and right now I am not feeling the bandwidth in my head to do that kind of critical reading of it–while trying to finish Summerhouse, which is my goal for this weekend. (Next up for my new-to-me read is going to be Mia Manansala’s y/a debut, methinks.) I am also thinking I may rewatch Surviving Ohio State–I was doing things and reading during my first watch, so wasn’t paying as much attention as perhaps I should have, and I’d like to write about it more in depth.

I missed the deadline for the short story I’ve been working on, which means I can now talk about the story and the market without jinxing anything; I was so fatigued this past week from the infusion I lost track of dates and thought the 20th, for some reason, was Monday. Nope, it was yesterday and so I missed the deadline and still didn’t finish the story. I will have to put it aside and finish it later–I think going forward, to keep from having so many story fragments, I’ll finish the story anyway rather than just putting it to the side and forgetting it. For one thing, I kind of got wrapped up in it and the main character. Anyway, the anthology was about sea monsters–anything below the surface of any water, really. When I was in the hospital, I had an idea for a new book–and realized I could use an old unfinished manuscript and its characters to graft onto the new idea (the old idea didn’t work because of its setting), which actually got me a little excited, and when I saw this submission call, I thought, oh, I can write something for this that will be an excerpt from this longer novel. So, that’s what I was trying to do with the story I called “The Lake Must Be Fed.” The original manuscript was called The Enchantress, and was set on the coast of the Florida panhandle, but it never really worked for there; the actual terrain was too different from what I imagined. I’ve also always been interested in the concept of “drowned towns,”–places that were evacuated to make way for a reservoir after a river was dammed. Scott Carsen’s last book that I read was one of these (completely different from my idea), and of course, the primary inspiration for moving it from the panhandle to northwest Alabama is Georgia’s own cursed lake, Lake Lanier. I’m sorry I didn’t finish the story, but I’m not putting it on the back-burner just yet; I have other things I need to write at the moment, but when I get stuck on the front-burner stuff I can work on “The Lake Must Be Fed,” which I think is a great title. I don’t know where it’ll get published, if ever, but it would be nice to have it finished and ready to go.

That’s the thing with short stories. I love the form, I love writing them (even as I always struggle with them), but the problem is there’s not many markets for them and you have to get really lucky with a specific submission call to say “oh, I have something for this!” and not have to write something new…which is partly why I have so many partials and unpublished stories in my files. Heavy sigh. AH, such is the writer’s lot in life, is it not?

I also managed to finish and send out another newsletter yesterday, and I also realized that I don’t have to finish and send every newsletter about my queer life during Pride, just like I don’t just read queer fiction during June, either. I do make more of an effort to talk about these things during Pride Month, when it’s more likely the straights might read it and reflect on what I’ve said (whether they agree or disagree with the points I make), but I’m not just gay during June; I’m gay all the rest of the year, too, and it’s just as important to speak out all year rather than just in June. I am writing one now about Overcompensating, and extrapolating that out to other shows/movies about queer people–and how you can pretty much tell when something queer is made to “play in Peoria” as opposed to being something authentic queer people can relate to other than just the sexualities being portrayed. (For the record, Overcompensating seemed authentic to me; but was it, or was it just something I could relate to? This is why I generally don’t do criticism–because it always feels like you’re speaking for the entire community, and I am uncomfortable with that, always having to make certain people understand I only speak for myself and not others, certainly not for the queer community as a whole.)

Well, my coffee certainly is working its magic on me this morning, isn’t it? This is fairly long already, and I don’t think I’ve covered everything that I want to as of yet? Let me get another cup of coffee and the next stage of my breakfast before I continue on here, shall I? Let’s shall.

1 do love me some honey-nut Cheerios. I started craving them when I was sick, and have been having them for breakfast almost every morning since I was able to start eating normally again. I’ve never been a breakfast person, choosing to use the time I’d spend getting breakfast together and then eating it instead staying in bed longer. That changed a bit when I started having to get up early every day, but now I eat so much breakfast that I’m really not all that hungry the rest of the day. And if I don’t eat a lot in the morning, I am starving by mid-afternoon. And I am also eating in the evenings; my dinners are usually lighter than breakfast, but I’ve been making dinner since I came home from the hospital. Again, I am generally not exhausted every night when I get home from work, and do not always repair to my easy chair to be a Sparky bed and relax from the day the way I used to; I can generally get some writing and reading and cleaning done every night, which is kind of nice. I don’t feel as defeated as I did before I got sick, either. I am suspecting that before it erupted into full-scale illness it was already affecting me physically before the lower intestine/colon went into a full revolt.

All right, I should probably bring this to a close and get to work this morning. I need to do some reading and cleaning and possibly some writing, this morning. I also need to do some editing, which I always seem to hate to do because it means more work. But I also always put it off, which is a mistake. So I am heading into the spice mines. Have a lovely Saturday wherever you are, Constant Reader, and no worries–I’ll be back no later than tomorrow morning.

I always wanted to go to Egypt and see the pyramids, among other sites. Egypt has fascinated me since my childhood, and I’ve always wanted to write about Egypt.
  1. Remember the other day when I was talking about not having a day job but would have to leave the house to run errands? I forgot about having things delivered! ↩︎

Under the Boardwalk

I hadn’t been sure that I would keep writing young adult novels after I revised, rewrote and published the first three (Sorceress, Sleeping Angel, and Sara) I didn’t know if it was a direction I wanted to keep going in. I knew I wanted to do stand-alones–always have wanted to do stand-alones–and I also like writing about teenagers and young adults.

You may remember (doubtful) me talking about a horror novel a while ago that I started writing in the 1980’s called The Enchantress that I only got about three or four chapters into before abandoning (because I didn’t know where to go next with it; and the first chapter I specifically remember rereading at some point in the decades since and shuddering in horror at how badly it was written), but one of the places in the book really stuck in my head–an old family-owned hotel called Mermaid Inn, which sat on the shores of Tuscadega Bay (which was my stand-in for Choctawhatchee Bay–my grandparents retired to a house on that bay and I’d always wanted to write about that area; still do–it’s where “Cold Beer No Flies” was set). After shelving The Enchantress (which I do think about from time to time, and wonder if I should revisit the idea) I kept thinking, you should write a book and call it Mermaid Inn because that is a great title!

I made a folder for it, wrote a few sketchy notes, and then… it sat in my files for a very long time.

If you will remember, I had originally planned to write an entire series of interconnected young adult novels, a la the Fear Street series by R. L. Stine, and one of the varied locations they would be spread out over would be Tuscadega, Florida, in the panhandle on a fictional bay. That was part of the note I scribbled for the folder–set this in the panhandle of Florida, and somehow connect it to the fictional Alabama county you’re going to write about someday.

I decided to write Mermaid Inn sometime after Hurricane Katrina, when I discovered yet again my own ignorance of geography. I was beginning to realize that the panhandle wasn’t the right setting for this book and decided to set it on the Alabama Gulf Coast, which made me realize I had absolutely no clue about that part of Alabama’s geography. I’d just never really given it much thought, to be honest; I knew Mobile was on the bay, and I knew that when you drive on I-10 through Mobile you have to take a tunnel below the Mobile River. I just had always assumed there was nothing south of Mobile in Alabama–I mean, it’s ON the water–and figured that those lower prongs of Alabama that reach down along the sides of the bay were uninhabitable wetlands. I discovered this to not be the case when visiting friends for the first time who lived in Alabama south of Mobile. They told me to take an exit off I-10 and drive south, which I didn’t think was possible.

Turns out it was–and I realized…this will work for my book! So I filed it away and forgot about it again.

I don’t remember precisely why I decided to write Mermaid Inn, but I did, and set in a small town on the prongs, south of Mobile; my friend Carolyn Haines helped me with some background and I know she told me some stories about closeted society men in Mobile and their hijinks and I thought, I could use this for the book and I think that may have been the impetus? And then I created my character, Ricky Hackworth, from Corinth, Alabama–po’ white trash who needs a swimming scholarship to attend the University of Alabama. (Sidebar: alert readers will recognize that Beau’s last name in Bury Me in Shadows–and at one point in the story he mentions he’s only the second Hackworth to go to college; “besides my cousin who got a swimming scholarship.”)

Bold Strokes didn’t like the title, and for perhaps maybe the fourth or fifth time in my career my original/working title didn’t make it on the cover. They recommended Dark Tide, which I really liked because it gave the sense of the book’s mood and tone and voice…and darkness.

The engine of my pickup truck made a weird coughing noise just as I came around a curve in the highway on the Alabama Gulf Coast and I saw Mermaid Inn for the first time.

My heart sank.

That’s not good, I thought, gritting my teeth. I looked down at the control panel. None of the dummy lights had come on. I still had about a half tank of gas. I switched off the air conditioning and the stereo. I turned into the long sloping parking lot of the Inn, pulling into the first parking spot. I listened to the engine. Nothing odd. It was now running smooth like it had the entire drive down. I shut the car off and kept listening. There was nothing but the tick of the engine as it started cooling.

Maybe I just imagined it.

Hope springs eternal.

The last thing I needed was to spend money on getting the stupid old truck fixed. Maybe it just needed a tune-up. I couldn’t remember the last time it had one.

Dad gave me the truck when I turned sixteen. It had been his work truck since before i was born–it was two years older than I was. He’d finally broken down and bought himself a new one. This old one was dependable and had almost two hundred thousand miles on it. Dad had taken good care of it. He’d babied it, gotten an oil change every three thousand miles without fail, and I could count on one hand the number of times it had been in the shop to be repaired.

It still had the original transmission.

It might not have been the nicest or prettiest car in my high school parking lot, but it got me where I needed to go and got good gas mileage. Since I was saving every cent I could for college, that was a lot more important than horsepower and cosmetics and a loud stereo that rattled your back teeth. The swimming scholarship I’d accepted from the University of Alabama wasn’t going to remotely cover anything close to the lowest estimate of what my expenses might be, but it was the best offer I’d gotten.

And I was grateful to have it. If they hadn’t offered, I wouldn’t be going at all.

Swimming was my ticket out of Corinth, Alabama.

That opening scene!

Dark Tide was probably my most hard-boiled young adult title published to that point. It was a dark story, and Ricky was poor–an economic condition I’d touched on with Sara, and something I generally try to avoid when writing. I’ve been poor, and I know how it feels; I don’t like remembering those days of checkbook mistakes and bounced checks and not having enough money from one paycheck to another. Ricky has taken a summer job as the lifeguard at Mermaid Inn in Latona, Alabama (Latona is another name for Daphne, which is actually a town on the prongs below Mobile), to save money to pay for college expenses his swimming scholarship to the University of Alabama wasn’t going to cover, and the water being there meant he could continue training. Once he arrives and is shown to his room on the uppermost floor of the building and meets the owner’s daughter, he learns that his predecessor from the summer before had simply disappeared–and young teenaged boys disappear with an alarming regularity over the past few years. He starts asking questions, mostly out of curiosity, and also starts having horrible dreams, about vicious mermaids beneath the water, and there are a lot of stories about killer mermaids from the days of the indigenous people and the Spanish. I wrote some terrific scenes in this book that I was really proud of–one particular dream sequence was especially chilling–and I was also trying something with the rhythm of the words, which I hadn’t done in a very long time, and I think it worked.

Writing Dark Tide was important to me because this was the book that reminded me again that I was writing stand-alones to help keep the series books fresher, more creative, and less paint by the numbers, too.

Don’t Fall in Love With A Dreamer

Yesterday was a little frustrating, I am not going to lie. The day went off the rails early and just never seemed to get back on track. Frustrating news, irritation, depression, and high anxiety all combined to make yesterday a challenge for me to stay on track and balanced, so much so that I just felt overwhelmed and didn’t even try to cope or stay centered because I felt tired all day on top of everything else that was going so irritatingly wrong yesterday.

I did sleep well Sunday night, but I was still worn out from the driving and so forth from the weekend.

So yeah, I was channeling some Major Bitch Energy yesterday, but managed to keep it all inside and not inflict it on anyone else. This was the big win of the day–because I used to just give rein to it and everyone else would just need to get out of my way or else. But I didn’t snap at anyone, I didn’t swear at anyone when I was driving home after work–but I did drive straight home after work, despite needing to run errands. I was smart enough to realize how close I was to snapping at someone or just being a dick in general, so I went home to spare the world and some unsuspecting person my foul mood.

Sigh.

And then I got home to find out that they’d started working on the house today–not really sure what they are doing but it’s an old house in New Orleans so it literally could be anything–and didn’t give any warning–as evidenced by the kitchen wall clock lying in pieces on the kitchen floor (it’s easy to put back together), and then I noticed a lot of the framed pictures in the laundry room were on the floor. The workers didn’t give any warning nor did our landlady; but Sam the handyman knew there were things on the walls so he called Paul. He got five minutes notice, but didn’t think about the clock in the kitchen–and why would he? It’s a whole different room, even if it is connected to the laundry room and one wall is also the back wall of the house.

I also slept wrong or something either Saturday or Sunday night so my neck was sore yesterday (still is this morning, in fact)–turning my head to the left hurt, which of course made driving an absolute joy. I do remember taking good health and not always hurting for granted for way too long. Sigh, I guess there is some truth to that saying you really don’t know how much you’ll miss something until it’s gone; it never even crossed my mind to be grateful I was in good physical condition. I didn’t even know how lucky I was; but I certainly am very well aware that I am a physical wreck at sixty two. Heavy heaving sigh. My neck is still sore this morning, but Ben-Gay has been doing the trick and it’s not quite as bad this morning as it was yesterday.

So, by the time I finally got the laundry started last night, I was already in a mood and said fuck it and repaired to the living room with Tug for some lap time. A purring sleeping kitten in your lap is the best thing for anxiety and stress after a bad day.

Hopefully today will be a good day. I am going to attempt to start eating more “not soft” foods this week at some point. I do still have a lot of that soft food stuff to get rid of anyway, so its just as well I was wrong about how long it would take to get my dentures (I don’t think I ever really told a timeline, which was why I got confused) because all this remaining soft food I’ve not gotten to yet will get used and it won’t just sit in the cabinet for months (years) waiting for me to get fed up at last and start pitching things, right? And I don’t need to have the expensive ice cream–it just has a high calorie count and is very filling and I like it, so I can probably start doing without that; maybe switch to something less expensive and with chunks of stuff in it. I don’t know that I can’t chew so much as I can’t bite into things, which is why I am going to start practicing with other foods. Most of this soft stuff is just carbohydrates, which my body is turning into sugar which is making me pre-diabetic which is also building up my uric acid which is manifesting as gout (everything is connected in your body–everything). I did make it into work, only had to use two hours of my sick time (I get to use two more on Wednesday when I get my sonogram), and managed to get some things done both there and on the home front.

As I was driving both to and back from Panama City Beach over the weekend, I also went down memory lane back to my childhood again. I hadn’t been back to Panama City Beach since the summer I graduated from high school, back in 1978; we went on a trip to visit the relatives and the beach and all for about three weeks that summer, right after I graduated. We never used I-10 back then–was there an I-10 then? Probably–but once I took the exit for 331 south, I knew exactly where I was; Defuniak Springs, and 331 was the road to my grandmother’s old place on Choctawhatchee Bay. And sure enough, 331 took me to the bridge over the bay–no longer a draw bridge or a two lane bridge; now it’s two separate bridges with two lanes crossing in either direction–and the gas station at the corner where you’d turn to go to my grandmother’s is now a park, which I didn’t catch until I was past it. I was going to turn and drive down there on the way home, just to take a look, but by the time I got across the bridge I was deep into The Only Good Indians and I was tired and just wanted to go home. But these old sites–and the incredible beauty of the beach at Panama City Beach–brought back a lot of memories and thoughts about me, my life, and my writing; as did spending time with my aunts and uncle on my father’s side of the family–none of whom I’d seen outside of weddings or funerals since that last trip down there before we moved to California in the the first months of 1981, and that made me go down that road. We spent most of Saturday after I arrived watching football games–Alabama-Texas A&M, and then Notre Dame-Louisville–which reminded me again of how deeply rooted football is as a family thing; we bond over watching football games, pretty much rooting for the same teams while hating the same ones. (They all overlook my LSU fandom, but they’re all Auburn fans who hate Alabama with a passion–my dad and mom and our little branch were the exceptions; rooting for Alabama unless they were playing Auburn. For me, the SEC is now LSU–with Auburn a distant second and Alabama just behind them in third. We all hate Tennessee and Florida–but they hate Georgia; I don’t. Even Dad hates Georgia.) But it made me think more about the panhandle books and the Alabama books I still want to write–and I was also laughing at myself for trying to make the books set there (like the ones in Kansas) so based in fictionalized reality that I feel tied to making the towns almost exactly the same; it’s fiction, lunkhead, so you can change things; it’s okay. (This also kind of dovetails with my “NOLier than Thou” post; because I realized I’ve always created fictional places in New Orleans while still trying to get the city right…it’s really about the mentality than the actual geography.)

But I would like to go back and explore; perhaps Paul and I can find a place over there to rent for a few days–a condo or something so we can eat at home and so forth; Paul would be more than happy to just be given beach access 24/7–and then I could think about the two or three books I want to set there. (I also want to set some books and more stories in the fictional town of Tuscadega, which I invented and based on Freeport, where my grandmother lived. “Cold Beer No Flies” was set there, for example. And driving through Mobile made me think of Dark Tide, too.) It was also interested because the Google Earth views I’d looked at made Panama City Beach look a lot different. It is a lot different than it used to be–more built up, no vacant lots, and yes, there are condos and massive resort hotels built on the beach side of Lower Beach Road (there was only a Beach Road back in the day–now there’s Lower, Middle, and Upper Beach Roads), but there are still public beaches where you can drive up and park right by the dunes and walk a very short distance to the beach, and those tourist-serving little shops that sell gimcracks and souvenirs and beach towels and inflatable rafts and suntan lotion are still there–not as many, but there are some, bearing names like Surfin’ Safari and so forth. I also took some pictures to help me remember things if and when I write about the area again. (It’s where I want to set my Where the Boys Are/slasher novel mash-up that I am calling Where the Boys Die. )

And another story–another one of the ones from back in the day when I was still in college and trying to figure out how to become a writer (which is what I thought those classes were for; they were not) I had written another one that I had turned in with “Whim of the Wind” (the first semester with a good teacher, I had started to feel like I could be a writer again, and by the second semester when I took the class a second time–you were allowed to take it twice–I decided to write a lot of stories to turn in….which was when I first started writing fast, I suppose. Anyway, when I turned in “Whim of the Wind” I turned in another story called “Thunder Island,” which was also set in the panhandle. It was also well received by the class, but not as well as the other, and so I’ve never really thought much about the second. I tried rewriting it once, but to no avail, and since then it’s just kind of been languishing in the files. Ironically, the story was about someone who was returning, after a long time, to the area after a funeral and was remembering a summer when he was a kid, staying on the bay with his grandmother…but while the story was good and worked, now it’s problematic. I’d have to update the story and change some things, and it’s not a crime story at all–although technically in its original problematic form it was an inadvertent crime story. Funny that I completely had forgotten writing a story set in the panhandle almost forty years ago that actually predicted the drive I just took. Maybe I should look it over again? May not be a bad idea.

But the most important thing for me to do today is assess my situations and figure out where I am at with everything, and what I need to get done. I am still in the midst of medical processes–part of yesterday’s problems stemmed from me either never being told or misunderstanding the denture process, which is much longer than I thought and I won’t be getting the final ones for another four to five weeks–and tomorrow morning I am having a sonogram on my heart and Friday an MRI on my shoulder. I need to get a handle on things because all the medical stuff keeps pushing everything else out of my brain; how do people prepare for surgery when they have a gazillion other things to do on top of that? I guess you just endure. I have no control over the situation–which is probably part of my problem with the whole thing–and just have to put my fate in the hands of others, which is something I never like doing and always chafe at; it’s part of the reason why flying is such an issue for me (one of the many reasons, all of which have to do with my faulty brain wiring)–I have no control over anything. You have to surrender control of your fate to the airline once you walk into the airport until you walk out of the airport at your destination and that really chafes at me. Anxiety, of course–on the one hand I know what the general disorder is and that everything else I thought was wrong with my brain’s wiring is just a symptom of the macro disorder, and I am better about controlling it now that I know what it is…but yesterday was one of those days where I felt no control at all over my life and situation and so that started the spiraling and it just got out of control.

But I am happy that I’m better and more balanced (and better rested ) this morning–the neck is still stiff and sore–and on that note, will head into the spice mines. Have a lovely day, Constant Reader, and I will be back later, probably.

Funky Town

Up early to head over to the West Bank to get my oil changed before heading to the panhandle this afternoon. My life is really a non-stop thrill ride, isn’t it?

I was grumpy yesterday, partly because I knew I wouldn’t be able to be productive over the course of this weekend which is of course silly on its face; why be irritated about something you have no control over? It is what it is, and I promised to do this and I want to see my dad, so I don’t know why I was feeling grumpy about the whole thing. I’m trying not to let things I cannot control hold sway over my emotions, my mood and my life anymore; as you can see, it’s not going 100% better–but I have to say overall I feel better about everything on a daily basis a lot more. I’ve not really been writing–using the excuse of this weekend’s trip to justify not doing so, but …there were two options. Try to write, knowing I’d have to take a break this weekend and get something done; or just blow it off and let my brain rest. Since the writing was not coming easily and felt like pulling teeth, it probably was just as well I wasn’t feeling motivated because that feeling turns into disgust and depression if the writing doesn’t go well, so I have to be careful with that sort of thing. But I was able to read some more of the Riley Sager, which I am enjoying, and of course I’ll get to listen to Stephen Graham Jones in the car on the way over there and back. My mind also wanders when I drive, even as I am listening, and I come up with ideas and things while i am behind the wheel of the car. I-10 east isn’t a fun drive, but at least I don’t have to go all the way to Lake City in eastern Florida in order to catch a highway south, thank you baby Jesus.

Clearly, the best day and time of the week to get my car serviced is Saturday mornings at seven. I left the house just before seven this morning, drove over there, got the car serviced and paid for it, then made a quick grocery making run on Manhattan Boulevard and walked back into the house with the grocery bags at about eight thirty this morning. There was little to no traffic, and since I can’t eat anything solid yet, there was no reason to stop at either Sonic or Five Guys on the way home (not that they were open yet, and if they were, they’d be serving breakfast, shudder). That went so smoothly–and yes, believe you me, I was feeling some anxiety as I walked out to the car this morning–that I am now beginning to wonder if letting myself sleep in on the weekends rather than setting the alarm for six to get up like I do every day of the week….I mean, I am awake and feeling functional right now, which is more than I can usually say at this time when I’ve allowed myself to sleep in a bit. (Tug also is used to being fed when I get up at six, so needless to say, he was having some Big Kitten Energy this morning as I kept hitting snooze.) It was also a lovely morning out–it was only sixty-nine degrees outside, which felt amazing; we’re obviously having a cold snap–and I also took a different exit since there was so little traffic; I stayed on 90 and got off at Camp Street instead of Tchoupitoulas, which brought me up Magazine–which I’ve not really drive up in a very long time–at least not since the office moved in 2018. It’s also very different down there, so I am going to need to walk around and explore that part of the neighborhood at some point.

LSU is playing at Missouri today; Missouri is undefeated but not ranked very highly, but there’s no telling how the game will turn out. It depends on which LSU teams shows up, I reckon. I think I’m going to be leaving around noon, so I can catch the beginning of the game and have an idea of how it’s going to go before Dad texts me and I depart on my four and a half hour journey into the heart of the panhandle; the belly of the beast, as it were. I read some more of the Sager novel in the waiting room of the dealership this morning; I’m enjoying it, for sure, but it has a bit of a slow start because of the necessary exposition and back story; I’ve gotten to the place where the present-day narrative is really starting to take off, so I imagine it will read like a brush fire now. Alabama is also at Texas A&M; I think Alabama has found its groove now and is most likely going to win out the season. Plus, I really hate Jimbo Fisher–I’ve hated him since he was at Florida State, and let’s not forget what he did to that program before getting his big payday at A&M (which he has yet to earn).

We finished off this season of Only Murders in the Building, which wrapped up the case of the Broadway show murder and ended with yet another murder in the building which is the set-up for the next season. I doubt Meryl Streep will return for another season, but hey, you never know. We also watched this week’s Ahsoka, but my mind was drifting a lot. I’m not sure if that was the season finale; I thought last week’s could have served as the finale, to be honest. But Our Flag Means Death is back, so we can watch that tomorrow when I get back (yay!) and something else has also dropped a new season for us to watch, but I’m not sure what it is at the moment.

And on that note, I am going to pack and start doing the last minute things I need to get done before I depart. Have a lovely Saturday, Constant Reader–I may not be back here until Monday, so try to go on without me.

She’s Got You

Work at home Friday, after I run some errands and take care of some things this morning. I have to go to the OMV to get a real ID (driver’s license expires Sunday), and since I am going over there, I am going to swing by the West Bank Petco to look at kitties (the SPCA has some they’ve farmed out to Petcos). That’s an exciting morning, isn’t it? I am taking Kelly J. Ford’s The Hunt with me, so I won’t be bored and since I have to sit around and wait, I might as well read. It’s been bothering me lately that my attention span just hasn’t been there for novels since the heat wave broke me several weeks ago–which is when I switched over to short stories in the Alfred Hitchcock Presents anthologies–and I’d like to get this book read before I leave for Bouchercon, primarily so I can hopelessly fanboy over her all weekend (I’ll also be fanboying over Margot Douaihy all weekend, too, among many others as I always do at Bouchercon). I’ve already picked out my books to take with me on the trip (the latest S. A. Cosby, Alison Gaylin, and Laura Lippman will be going to San Diego with me, with Donna Andrews batting clean up), and also already know I will probably get no writing done while I am there. I don’t really have anything due–there will be page proofs for Mississippi River Mischief to go over at some point–but everything else is up in the air for now.

I did manage to get the edits taken care of on Mississippi River Mischief and turned it in last night, so other than the afore-mentioned page proofing, it’s effectively finished. Since the other book–I’ll post about it this weekend, no worries–is also finished and now out of my hair, I have nothing pressing at the moment. Woo-hoo! I also picked up the mail and stopped at Fresh Market to lay in supplies for a weekend of not getting into the car at all. I wrote for a while, and came to a realization about this short story I could never get to work that I’ve been revising, so I am going to go into author mode and talk about writing, so bear with me.

This particular story, “Whim of the Wind.” was the story I wrote when I took creative writing again after switching universities after my first horrendous creative writing experience (if I haven’t said it enough, the professor told me I’d never be a published writer). This story was beloved by my class and my professor, who told me I should submit it to literary magazines. I did a few times, it was always rejected, and there was a slight flaw in the story–but no one who read it could ever give me any insight into how to fix the story. It was also my first Alabama story, my first visit to my fictional Corinth county, and so it’s always kind of been precious to me. I never could figure out how to revise it or what to do with it…but as I’ve been revising it (it’s now twice as long as it was, and I’ve not finished), it’s been changing some. I think what everyone was responding to was the voice–I’ve used it again since, and people always respond to that aspect–and really, as long as the voice is intact and preserved, that’s all that really matters. I also realized last night something else–I was having to change the climactic scene in the story, and as such had to come up with a different Civil War legend to build it around–and I realized this story, along with two other, had been written using the same trope, that I have since learned was apocryphal–the evil Yankee deserter. I wrote this story using it, I wrote “Ruins” using it, and I wrote another, “Lilacs in the Rain,” also using it (that story has morphed into a novella renamed “The Scent of Lilacs in the Rain”); so yes, I wrote three short stories based on the same, apocryphal, Civil War urban (rural?) legend. Bury Me in Shadows evolved out of “Ruins,” and I blew up the trope in that book; that was the “Yankee deserter” story I was meant to write. So, the other two need different legends, and I found a good one for “Whim of the Wind”–but again, a delicate subject I’ll need to be very careful with–and now maybe I can make “The Scent of Lilacs in the Rain” actually work, now that I know what I need to do with it. I am also having a lot of fun looking into Alabama history and finding these great legends and stories and folk tales that I should be able to find something to use.

I slept really well last night, and feel pretty good this morning. Don’t feel so great about having to go to the West Bank, but that’s okay; it’s a routine change I can live with, and I can actually do my weekend grocery shopping over there as well–and I can get Five Guys to bring home for lunch. I think after that I will have laid in enough supplies to not have to leave the house for the rest of the weekend–I may go get the mail tomorrow–and I want to clean, organize, read, and write all weekend. Paul got home late last night (another grant) so we didn’t get a chance to watch anything last night–he walked in while I was watching a Youtube documentary about the usurpation of the English throne by the House of Lancaster that set the dangerous precedent (for kings) that incompetent ones could be overthrown and replaced…and eventually led to the Wars of the Roses. I also was watching some videos–someone did a series of the greatest plays in LSU football history, which was very fun to watch and relive (I really should do an in-depth post about my love of LSU football; not that everyone who’s paying attention doesn’t already know about it, of course, but I love football and it’s fun for me to write/talk about it. I also find the fandom interesting, too.)..and they were grouped by stretches of time, eras, if you will (2007 season got its own video)–and also guided by the scarcity of available digitized video from the far distant past. (I was also thinking “don’t the networks that originally aired the games have tape? Can’t it be digitally remastered? I know the SEC Network has done this with some classic games from the past; it’s a project the NCAA should back fully, as it’s the history of the sport.) It’s very fun to revisit past games and my memories–LSU is never boring to watch, ever–and I am very excited about the upcoming season, both for LSU and the Saints. I worry that everyone is over-hyping LSU (something I always worry about) but given the over-performance from last year, it’s kind of understandable, really. LSU came out of nowhere to win ten games, beat Alabama, and beat both Florida and Auburn on the road in the same season for the first time in program history. So, yeah, understandable. I was thinking before last season that it was going to have to be a wash–new coach, rebuilding after two down years, etc.–and that this year would be the one where the Tigers would make a run. I am excited for our new quarterback for the Saints, too–he, like me, also went to Fresno State, so I have even more reason to root for him and like him–and they seem to be doing well in the preseason. GEAUX SAINTS!

I did work on the revision of “Whim of the Wind” yesterday–it’s amazing to me that I’ve taken a story that barely over two thousand words and added another almost three thousand to it, and it still isn’t done–but I am feeling good about the story, now that I’ve recognized my attachment to it that actually was hindering me from revising it. It’ll always exist in that original version, after all, and nothing I do to it in current or future versions are ruining that precious first version that meant so much to me as an aspiring writer. Sentimentality–the very thing I am always trying to guard against when it comes to almost everything in my life–got the best of me with this story. The other story I turned it at the same time, which I’ve also never been able to correct, perhaps now I can fix it, too. I had thought about expanding the other one (which is actually incredibly problematic on many levels by modern standards) into a novel, and perhaps I still will; I’ve started slowly world-building around the panhandle of Florida the same way I have with Corinth County in Alabama, but there’s no crime or mystery or supernatural thing going on in that story; so it would be a coming-of-age romance….but I may know a way (that just came to me) and there were some other ideas about it, too. You never know, right? Why not riff for a while and see what comes up?

I’m kind of getting excited about writing again, can you tell?

And on that note, I should start getting ready for the OMV and get that hellish experience over with once and for all. Have a lovely Friday, Constant Reader and you never know–I may be back later.

The Wurlitzer Prize (I Don’t Want to Get Over You)

And here we are on yet another Pay-the-Bills Wednesday. Paul is leaving today, and won’t be back until a week from Saturday. I also don’t have Scooter for cuddles and company. Will I go mad living under conditions of absolute reality? Even larks and katydids are believed by some to dream.

Yesterday was a much better day than I’ve had in quite some time, all things considered. I slept incredibly well, so didn’t start off my day either sleepy or groggy or tired, which is always a plus. The work day was relatively low-key; we were slow in the morning but busy in the afternoon, and frankly, I prefer it that way; busy in the morning inevitably means tired in the afternoon, and if we’re so it’s agony. But over all, a good day at the office and an auspicious beginning to the month of August. (I also didn’t note that it was the anniversary of both of our moves to New Orleans; first in 1996, then again on August 1 2001 when we moved back home from That Horrible Year Away.)

I ran errands on my way home–mail, prescriptions, groceries–and then came home to a sink full of dirty dishes which needed attention, so I took care of that as well as another load of laundry, and then sat my ample buttocks into my desk chair and banged out the revision of Chapter 3 I’d been stuck on for a little less than a week (not so much stuck as tired and didn’t want to bother with it, in brutal honesty) and got it finished and under control before moving onto Chapter Four. I also worked on “Whim of the Wind” for a little while, and also did some more research into the history of the city I am fictionalizing for the WIP, which I continue to fail to discuss. Perhaps this weekend? Perhaps. I kind of want to see if I can get past Chapter 4 before I talk about the book publicly, but that’s nothing more than my own superstitions, which is pretty stupid. As a general rule I don’t believe in things like jinxes and curses and so forth, but I do believe you can actually speak things into existence sometimes. The only takeaway I got from Psych 101 in college was the concept of visualization; that picturing something in your mind can make it happen–but not like winning the powerball or anything like that, but more along the lines of why you always spill something full when you’re carrying it no matter how careful you are…because your mind cannot picture a negative–you can’t see yourself not spilling it; so when you think about not spilling it, you will because you see yourself in your mind actually spilling it. (It’s like how you cannot prove a negative–you can rarely prove you aren’t something; but it is incredibly easy to prove you are. I use this example: someone drinks a lot. They don’t think they have a problem, they don’t wake up in the morning feeling like death warmed over twice and wanting another drink. But once someone says, “You have a drinking problem”, you can’t prove that you don’t. You can say you aren’t, but that’s denial. You can stop drinking for a time period—but if you start drinking again, well, there, you see, you were in recovery and then relapsed! You cannot win, so why bother trying?) It is much harder to prove something isn’t true than it is proving something is. Guilt is the same way–how do you convince the cops, who are convinced you are, that you aren’t?

I will say this about the WIP–it’s more hardboiled and noir than what I usually write, I am having a lot of fun with it, and it’s been a long time since I wrote anything set in Florida, if I ever have? Dark Tide started as a Florida panhandle novel, but I moved it to the Alabama coast; “Cold Beer No Flies” was a panhandle story, too. But this is me fictionalizing Tampa–come to think of it, my main character in The Orion Mask lived in a fictional Tampa I am using again for this one–and I’ve not set foot in Tampa, other than flying in and out for Bouchercon in St. Petersburg, since I moved away in December 1995 to once again reboot and restart my life.

I was tired after all my errands yesterday–the thermostat in my car let me know it was 101 when I left the office yesterday; it is insane for it to be that hot, even in New Orleans. It’s exhausting dealing with this insane summer heat this year. But I did get some writing done yesterday, which was a good thing, and of course Paul finished packing. Heavy heaving sigh. Ah, well, I have Superman and Lois to catch up on, and My Adventures with Superman, and so many old classic films to watch, so I shouldn’t have any trouble keeping myself entertained so I don’t feel lonely or bored. And of course I could be writing, which is always difficult in August…I also think about how about eighteen years ago I was finishing (finally) Mardi Gras Mambo at long last in that last, fateful August before Katrina. It really was a completely different world all those years ago; maybe I ‘ll go back and read those old Livejournal entries from August of 2005, so I can remember the world before once again. I also have a lot of reading to get caught up on, as well. I have some errands to run this evening on the way home from work, and then I am going to be inside for the night. We did watch another episode of Gotham Knights last night–very intense, as the season finale moves closer–but now I have to wait for Paul to come home to finish. Heavy heaving sigh.

But perhaps I’ll use all this solitude productively. One never knows, and on that note, I am heading into the spice mines. Have a lovely Wednesday, Constant Reader, and I will check in with you again tomorrow.

Dark Tide

I hadn’t been sure that I would keep writing young adult novels after I revised, rewrote and published the first three (Sorceress, Sleeping Angel, and Sara) I didn’t know if it was a direction I wanted to keep going in. I knew I wanted to do stand-alones–always have wanted to do stand-alones–and I also like writing about teenagers and young adults.

If you remember, a few entries back I talked about a horror novel I started writing in the 1980’s called The Enchantress that only got about three or four chapters into before abandoning (because I didn’t know where to go next with it; and the first chapter I specifically remember rereading at some point in the decades since and shuddering in horror at how badly it was written), but one of the places in the book really stuck in my head–an old family owned hotel called Mermaid Inn, which sat on the shores of Tuscadega Bay (which was my stand-in for Choctawhatchee Bay–my grandparents retired to a house on that bay and I’ve always wanted to write about that area). After shelving The Enchantress (which I do think about from time to time, and wonder if I should revisit the idea) I kept thinking, you should write a book and call it Mermaid Inn.

I made a folder for it, wrote a few sketchy notes, and it sat in my files for a very long time.

If you will remember, I had originally planned to write an entire series of interconnected young adult novels, a la the Fear Street series by R. L. Stine, and one of the varied locations they would be spread out over would be Tuscadega, Florida, in the panhandle on a fictional bay. That was part of the note I scribbled for the folder–set this in the panhandle of Florida, and connect it to the fictional Alabama county you’re going to write about somehow.

I decided to write Mermaid Inn sometime after Hurricane Katrina, when I discovered yet again my own ignorance of geography. I’d just never really given it much thought, to be honest; I knew Mobile was on a bay, I knew when you drove on I-10 through Mobile you have to take a tunnel below the Mobile River. I just had always assumed there was nothing south of Mobile in Alabama–I mean, it’s ON water–and figured that those lower prongs of Alabama that reach down along the sides of the bay were uninhabitable wetlands. I discovered this to not be the case when visiting friends for the first time who lived in Alabama south of Mobile. They told me to take an exit off I-10 and drive south, which I didn’t think was possible.

It is.

I don’t remember precisely when or how or why I decided to write Mermaid Inn and set in a small town on the prongs, south of Mobile; I just know now that at some point I decided to do this–and my friend Carolyn Haines might have been involved; I know she told me some stories about closeted society men in Mobile and their hijinks and I thought, I could use this for the book and I think that may have been the impetus? And then I created my character, Ricky Hackworth, from Corinth, Alabama–po’ white trash who needs a swimming scholarship to attend the University of Alabama. (Sidebar: alert readers will recognize that Beau’s last name in Bury Me in Shadows–and at one point in the story he mentions he’s only the second Hackworth to go to college; “besides my cousin who got a swimming scholarship.”)

The engine of my pickup truck made a weird coughing noise just as I came around a curve in the highway on the Alabama Gulf Coast and I saw Mermaid Inn for the first time.

My heart sank.

That’s not good, I thought, gritting my teeth. I looked down at the control panel. None of the dummy lights had come on. I still had about a half tank of gas. I switched off the air conditioning and the stereo. I turned into the long sloping parking lot of the Inn, pulling into the first parking spot. I listened to the engine. Nothing odd. It was now running smooth like it had the entire drive down. I shut the car off and kept listening. There was nothing but the tick of the engine as it started cooling.

Maybe I just imagined it.

Hope springs eternal.

The last thing I needed was to spend money on getting the stupid old truck fixed. Maybe it just needed a tune-up. I couldn’t remember the last time it had one.

Dad gave me the truck when I turned sixteen. It had been his work truck since before i was born–it was two years older than I was. He’d finally broken down and bought himself a new one. This old one was dependable and had almost two hundred thousand miles on it. Dad had taken good care of it. He’d babied it, gotten an oil change every three thousand miles without fail, and I could count on one hand the number of times it had been in the shop to be repaired.

It still had the original transmission.

It might not have been the nicest or prettiest car in my high school parking lot, but it got me where I needed to go and got good gas mileage. Since I was saving every cent I could for college, that was a lot more important than horsepower and cosmetics and a loud stereo that rattled your back teeth. The swimming scholarship I’d accepted from the University of Alabama wasn’t going to remotely cover anything close to the lowest estimate of what my expenses might be, but it was the best offer I’d gotten.

And I was grateful to have it. If they hadn’t offered, I wouldn’t be going at all.

Swimming was my ticket out of Corinth, Alabama.

That opening scene!

Together Again

Oh, wow, it’s pay the bills day and I didn’t even see it coming! How weird is that?

I managed to write 1500 words or so on a short story yesterday–AND I went to the gym. I slept well again last night, which was also pretty marvelous. It’s lovely to feel rested, as well as to feel awake when I leave the house, rather than walking and driving in a fog I don’t remember later. As such, my moods have been better and I haven’t been on edge, either. While this is all quite marvelous, at the same time I find myself reluctant to deal with odious chores or tasks–simply because I worry about opening Pandora’s box and releasing the demons of stress, irritation, and insomnia into my little world again.

The short story I am working on is called “The Sound of Snow Falling,” and it was one I had thought up in order to submit to the Minneapolis Bouchercon anthology I am co-editing with the marvelous Terri Bischoff. But I have also been thinking lately that I probably shouldn’t submit anything to the blind read; I did for the other two I edited, and my stories were chosen. No one ever said anything, but after the books were released I always felt a little uncomfortable because it could be seen as improper (the New Orleans story was nominated for a Macavity Award and the St. Petersburg for an Anthony, so that helped alleviate that somewhat), but I am thinking this time around that it’s better to not mess with it at all. I like the idea behind the story, and I might try to actually go the submit it to a magazine route, but we’ll see. Right now I am just regurgitating stuff up on the page that I’ll have to whittle down later to make it work, but I love the title and I am interested in the story, so will keep going with it and see how it turns out. I am thinking this weekend I am going to edit stories–I have one that was rejected by the last MWA submissions call that needs a bit of work, and of course, the novella; hopefully I’ll have a first draft of this one finished to edit this weekend. I also would like to do some reading this weekend–but this is all dependent on how things go with the tooth extraction. If I am still on painkillers this weekend, well, it’s not very likely I’ll be writing or editing or doing much reading–if my memory of painkillers is accurate–but I am not going to worry about any of that now, and am just going to proceed with making my plans. It won’t be the first time life interfered with the plans of mice and Greg.

I am enjoying writing again, frankly, and it feels very good, to be honest. I am enjoying going to the gym again. I feel like in some weird way that I am more of myself now than I have been in a long time, and I am not really sure what that is all about, to be completely honest; like I’ve just been going through the motions for a very long time and somehow in a dark cloud that turns everything into an odious chore, one more thing I need to check off the list, one more task to accomplish on the slow descent into the grave or something. Plotting out the Scotty is also turning out to be something a lot more fun than I had thought it would be; I am enjoying thinking and plotting and creating, and also thinking of other ways to challenge myself and stimulate myself into taking bigger chances with the writing and pushing myself harder. I’ve been thinking a lot about one of Michael Nava’s questions for us all on the San Francisco Public Library panel on queer crime writing–how do you keep your series fresh? It also came up during Laura Lippman’s interview on CBS This Morning that I watched the other day; and it’s a valid question. One of the reasons I stopped writing the Chanse series was a sense that I had fallen into a repeating pattern with the stories–and now that I am thinking back on the Scotty series, I am also seeing patterns developing in the last few books. I’ve already mentioned here about someone asking how many car accidents HAS Scotty been in?–which is actually valid; I think he’s been in one at least four times out of eight books–and last night I was thinking, you know, the last two Scotty books opened at parties–or rather, with him GOING to a big party, which then set up the story for the rest of the book…

Not good, Gregalicious. But this new one–working title Mississippi River Bottom, although Mississippi River Mayhem fits the alliteration pattern of the previous books in the series better–will NOT open at a party, and there will be some changes for the boys as well–no, I am not moving them out of the Quarter, no worries on that score–but some significant changes nonetheless. For one thing, and I’d hinted at this in Royal Street Reveillon–Scotty has bought the building from Millie and Velma, who have retired to the Florida Gulf Coast (which will give me a chance to the send the boys to the panhandle at some point to solve a mystery). But I’ve also got a sticky note on my computer reading NO CAR CRASHES THIS TIME.

I also worry about repeating myself with short stories and the novellas, frankly. I was thinking about my 1994 New Orleans novella, “Never Kiss a Stranger”–and realized that the scene I originally envisioned for my main character meeting the younger man he becomes involved with I had lifted and used in another story, “A Streetcar Named Death.” I mean, there’s clearly no reason why my character can’t first see the young man on the streetcar in the early hour of the morning–it happens, and it’s definitely a way for people to meet in New Orleans, for sure–but there’s always that nagging worry about have I done this already? Is this story pattern the one I default to following all the time?

Sigh. It’s never easy being a Gregalicious,

And on that note, tis off to the spice mines. Have a lovely Wednesday, Constant Reader!

Young Offender

As I said yesterday, I had been wanting to reread Summer of ’42 for quite some time now, and finally decided to bite the bullet and start it yesterday.

He always intended to come back, to see the island again. But the oppertunity had never quite presented itself. This time, however, with a break in his schedule and with events moving remrkably in his favor, he had driven far up the New England coast to see if the magic still prevailed. Aboard the old ferry his Mercedes convertible earned the icy nonchalance of a half dozen craggy islanders, for very few new cars ever make that crossing. Cars that came to Packett Island are usually well into the varicose stage of their lives, and as such, they are by time and temperament unconcerned with a return trip to the mainland. “Cars come to this fuckin’ island to die.” Oscy had said that. Oscy, the big deal philosopher. And it was as true in 1970 as it had been in 1942.

He studied the faces around him, each turned to the wind, taking the breeze full face. It was apparent that none aboard remembered him. But then, he was barely fifteen that last time he forked over the twenty-five-cent fare. And in the intervening years nmuch had changed, including the twenty-five cents, which was now a dollar, and himself, which was now forty-two. How, then, could anyone remember him? The nerve.

The Mercedes moved with disinterest along what purported to be the Packett Island Coastway, for the speed limit was thirty, hardly a challenge for an exhumed LaSalle, let alone a hot Mercedes-Benz. To his left were the familiar dunes, sulking in the grass, incongruously scattered with the uncatalogued refuse and bleached timber that the sea could toss so casually across the road whenever it felt so disposed. And to his right, the sea itself, choppy and gray-green. And large. Very large indeed. One of the largest in the world.

I first read Summer of ’42 when I was either eleven or twelve; I don’t remember which; I just know that we had already moved out to the suburbs and I bought a copy off the wire racks where the Zayre’s stocked paperbacks, cover out and about four books deep. I’m not really sure why I picked it, of the scores of paperbacks from Dell and Fawcett Crest and Pocketbooks; there had to be a reason but nearly fifty years later I cannot remember. The movie was out at the time, and the cover art was from the movie, with Jennifer O’Neill standing in the sand looking out to see, and Gary Grimes seated in the sand behind her looking at her longingly; her little beach cottage was in the background along with the dunes and sea grasses. Was it because the cover depicted a beach scene, and we were beginning to spend our summer vacations including the Gulf Coast of the Florida panhandle in our annual jaunts to Alabama to visit family? The answer is lost in the mists of time, alas, but I did buy it, I did read it, and never really forgot it. It’s a lovely little book, nostalgic and sweet with a little tinge of sadness running through it; I think I also identified very strongly with Hermie, the main character (obviously, standing in for Herman Raucher; the book is supposedly semi-autobiographical). Hermie was a dreamer whose family didn’t really understand him, he had an older sister who is barely a presence at all in the book, and his fantasy life/world was just as strong as mine. He often went off into daydreams the same way I did, and he didn’t really fit with his friends, whom he enjoyed and was annoyed by in equal measure. At just fifteen, he is just starting to experience his own sexuality, and that summer of 1942 he becomes obsessed with a beautiful young woman who stays in a cottage just outside the small town on the beach. He sees her with her husband–also stunningly handsome, and they are so clearly in love, and begins to sort of watch them whenever he gets the chance. The husband goes off to the war, leaving her alone, and he contrives a way to meet her, offering to help her carry packages home when she is overburdened. He is also clumsy and awkward; saying and doing things that embarrass him, and they begin to develop a kind of weird and different little friendship. She just thinks he’s a sweet boy, but he is crazy about her, and she becomes his sexual fantasy; speeding along his awakening awareness of sex and sexuality.

The book is entirely from his point of view; so deep inside that we really don’t get to know any of the other characters in the book other than from his perspective and how he perceives them. There are parts that are actually quite funny–the scene where he buys condoms is hilarious–and the bittersweet feeling that she was his first love that he can never quite forget is the motor that drives the engine of the story forward. It’s melancholy, and Raucher was a really good writer; he captures that awkwardness of being insecure in your own skin at fifteen beautifully, and the entire tone of the book–that bittersweet melancholy for a lost love and a lost time and really, lost youth–is rendered exquisitely.

And yet…

He doesn’t know this woman at all, other than she’s quite beautiful and in their little exchanges, very kind to him, if a bit confused by his behavior. He doesn’t even know her name until the book is almost finished. (SPOILER) And when she does have sex with him in the end–after getting the shattering telegram that her beloved husband has been killed in the war and she’s been drinking, in the throes of a powerful grief–it never really made sense to me. Why would she do this? She’s in her early twenties and he’s fifteen. And despite her vulnerability in that moment, she’s the adult here…when I first read the book and saw the movie, that power differential wasn’t anything I noticed (as I said, I wrote my own story inspired by this one without a second thought about statutory rape and so forth), but now…it’s weird. And he of course has never forgotten the first woman he had sex with (they say you never forget the first) but it also doesn’t go into any of those directions, and why now has he decided to go back and see the place? There’s a lot left out, and I actually was thinking, as i read it this last time, how much I would have liked to have seen the story from her point of view.

It’s a short book and, as I said, the writing is well executed and it flows nicely. It made me start thinking about my own story and how I could possibly rewrite it now. I was able to read over the course of the afternoon (like I said, it was really short) and I did enjoy the reread…but this time it raised a lot more questions than it did to my much younger self.

But like Hermie, I also never forgot the story, so that’s something, right?

You Need To Calm Down

So, I went to the gym for the first time in nearly five months yesterday morning.

Apparently there’s another tropical storm out there with New Orleans in its Cone of Uncertainty; Wednesday night seems to be when it’s projected to come ashore; they’re saying Category One is about as big as Zeta will get, given conditions in the Gulf and so forth, and while that’s not nearly as scary as the bigger storm, it’s still a cause for concern amongst New Orleanians. We’ve been incredibly lucky this year in this insane season of storms, but every time someone else gets it instead you can’t help but feel that your odds for a direct hit are exponentially increasing every time that happens. And it’s always stressful when there’s a storm coming your way–that whole losing power thing is the least of it, of course, but at least it’s not the dog days of summer right now and losing power doesn’t mean melting into a puddle inside the Lost Apartment.

THANK GOD.

I know I loathe cold weather, but I am also all about the air conditioning.

The track has starting shifting to the east–sorry, Mississippi, Alabama, and Florida panhandle–and local meteorologists are saying the longer it stays stationary and slow-moving where it is, the more likely it is that it will continue to shift east. But I’d still rather not have that in the back of my head for the next three days, you know what I mean?

So I went to my new gym yesterday morning–it was quite chilly out for a Sunday morning in October in New Orleans–and did my first workout since May. It was marvelous. I was smart and only did one set of 15 reps with low weight and exercised every body part; I stretched for a good while before going to the weight machines, and did 100 crunches to conclude before walking back home. As always, one must start slow–one set this first week, two sets the next, then three in the third week and then add weight in the fourth–in order to get your body used to exercising again. In about two months of this (full body workout three times per week) I’ll change the workout to different body parts per workout–chest and back one day, shoulders and arms the second, and legs the third–and make the workouts more intense and difficult, in order to begin pushing myself and getting my heart rate up and making my muscles grow so they can burn fat more efficiently. My goal is to get my weight down to 200 by March, and then reassess my goals and where I want to be physically by Memorial Day.

I used to always balance out my workout goals based on gay holidays when I would go out in public with the inevitable goal of removing my shirt at some point. I always wanted to peak at Southern Decadence. hen it was just maintenance through Halloween and Carnival, bulking until Memorial Day and then lean down for Decadence for peak lean muscularity.

Ah, my shallow youth.

I do wonder, though, if having those goals made the workouts easier to focus on and stick to; not using those times as an endgame to work towards might have had something to do with the loss of intensity and interest in regular workouts, along with not caring as much about a healthier diet. Points to ponder.

We started watching the new Nicole Kidman HBO series The Undoing last night, and were quite taken in by it. Kidman is always a fine actress, and the rest of the cast, which includes Hugh Grant and Lily Rabe, is also quite good. We also are continuing with the very strange M. Night Shyamalan series Servant on Apple Plus, which continues to be very strange and remarkably disturbing. It’s quite good, creepy, and rather intense. I’m still not entirely certain I know what’s going on in that house, to be honest, and I’m also not really sure who I am supposed to be rooting for. The episode we watched last night, which primarily focused on Rupert Grint’s character, was rather confusing. But…it’s also M. Night Shyamalan, which means it’s probably intended to be confusing.

I slept very well last night, and I’m not sore this morning, which is, of course, always a plus. My muscles feel tired, in that good way from working them, rather than tight and tired from non-use. Today will be a day off from the gym–I still need to buy a lock to take with me–and then after work tomorrow I’ll walk over there and get in a workout. I’m thinking Saturdays will be the day when I go and use the aerobics studio for my own cardio workout–if, of course, I can still remember my routines from my classes all those years ago–and do weights on Sunday. It means rearranging and rescheduling my weekends so I can make sure I can still get things done and stay on top of things, but adding some structure to my weekends cannot be a bad thing. Structure is always important for me–as well as routine–and I feel like that is what has been missing in my life since the pandemic began–having some sort of structure and routine to keep up with.

The Saints managed to win yesterday–and it wasn’t a guarantee, either, until the final drive–and so we had a good Louisiana football weekend. I am quite pleased with how both LSU and the Saints played this weekend; although one can never be sure if the LSU win actually meant anything, to be honest. Sure, South Carolina managed to knock off Auburn the week before–but in this crazy college football season no teams (besides Clemson and Alabama) seem to have any kind of identity; they are all playing all over the map, and outside those two top teams, it seems like everyone else are all about the same–anyone can win over anyone on any given weekend. Should make the play-offs race interesting, and regardless, whoever winds up winning it all this year should have an asterisk next to their name because the season is shortened, weird, and staggered.

And the pandemic seems to be kicking into high gear yet again, just like the Spanish flu pandemic did all those years ago.

But I am trying something new: optimism. That was why I enjoyed Ted Lasso so much–the show was about kindness, understanding, and optimism–and while all of those things have been in short supply for this horrific year (partly why the show resonated so much; it served as a reminder of what we can be if we choose to be), I am going to try to keep all of those things in mind going forward…knowing full well there are going to be times when it’s not going to be easy to keep any of those mentalities and life philosophies in the forward part of my life and mind…but also understanding and trying to remember that it can be a choice.

And on that note, it is off to the spice mines. Have a lovely day, Constant Reader–I certainly intend to.