Tag: Gold Digger

Friendly Fire

Tuesday morning and I am very sleepy. I didn’t want to get up this morning, and I went to bed before ten last night. Before ten. That is so not like me, but I was very tired last night–and apparently, I was pretty worn out for whatever reason because it carried over to this morning.

I’m not sure why that is, but here I sit, swilling coffee, in a desperate attempt to awaken and be functional by the time I get in the car and head to the Marine Building for this morning’s screenings. It’s not looking good so far, if I’m being completely honest.

We finished watching Gold Digger last night, which was very interesting. It held our interest to the very end, twisted and turned in several directions, and was very well acted throughout. There’s something to be said about filming what is, basically, at heart a romantic story as though it were a crime story; we certainly never knew where it was going and couldn’t help but wonder who is going to get killed here? It was very interesting, and I would recommend it.

I worked from home yesterday, and it’s amazing how quickly time goes by when you’re working from home; I would have always thought–and remembered, from when I used to–that time dragged when you work from home. I sat in my chair doing data entry all afternoon (and while the LSU-Texas A&M game from last season played in the background on the television, thank you, Youtube) and before i knew it was time to quit. As New Orleans is slowly beginning to reopen this week–actually, last weekend–I’m not sure how much longer I’ll be working from home two and a half days a week anymore; but it’s not necessarily a bad thing as I am almost finished with doing the data entry. Wednesday, in fact, should finish it all off once and for all. I’m sure there are other things I can do, but I am hoping that finally getting this done will coincide with a return to going to the office. We are opening the clinic again starting on the day after Memorial Day–only the STI clinic, and only on a limited basis two days a week–but it’s a start of sorts.

I am really looking forward to this coming three day weekend, too. It does seem a bit strange to be looking forward to a three day weekend when I work from home on Mondays anyway, but while working from home definitely has its qualities, it’s still work–and I’ve never been keen on combining HOME with my day job. Home is where I write and edit, relax and read and write and do all kinds of ME things; not day job things, and I don’t particularly like having those lines blurred. It’s bad enough that whenever I am home and not writing I feel guilty; the last thing I need is to feel guilty that I’m not writing or doing data entry when it’s after five.

ARGH.

And on that note, tis off to the spice mines with me. Have a lovely Tuesday, Constant Reader, and I’ll talk with you later.

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Here

Another Saturday and lord, so, so much to do–and absolutely no desire to do any of it, quite frankly. I had some trouble sleeping last night, but I feel okay this morning; it may have taken me a few hours to go to sleep, but when I finally did, the sleep was deep and restful, which is all that matters. I woke up again before seven, then slovenly stayed in bed for another couple of hours because it was comfortable. Yesterday was one of those days where I got overwhelmed with everything, primarily because it was humid and muggy and sticky and nasty; and staying down in the garage at the office to screen people and help with the syringe access program was miserable. That kind of weather literally sucks the energy out of you, and by the time my shift was over and I was on my way home, I was enormously grateful that I remembered to get up early and put the turkey breast into the crock pot, so all I had to do when I got home was shred it and make the instant stuffing for dinner.

We watched another episode of Gold Digger–still not sure where this story is going, but the way it’s filmed, it has to end with some kind of crime or something happening; whether Julia Ormond’s much younger lover ends up being killed and killing someone from her family in self-defense remains to be seen–or he may just kill her once they are married; it’s definitely filmed as a crime show, but I’m not really sure where it’s going, to be honest. It’s very well done and very well-acted, and as I have a short story in progress that follows the same sort of set-up (“Please Die Soon”), it’s intriguing to see how and where the story goes.

We also got caught up on Penny Dreadful: City of Angels, which is also incredibly well done, and I really love that they are showing the Latinx community in Los Angeles during this time period. There was a moment when I remembered the Zoot Suit riots, and vaguely remembered a movie about them from the early 1980’s called Zoot Suit, and yep, there it was–the racist LAPD breaking up a Latinx dance club where all the guys were wearing zoot suits. It’s really interesting, now that I think about it, how little of a role the Latinx community of southern California plays in most crime fiction of the time, or set in the time (although I will admit I’ve yet to read most of James Ellroy); it’s amazing how little representation minorities have in crime fiction, or in fiction in general.

This morning Facebook reminds me that last year on this date the Anthony Award nominations for 2019 were released; I’m still thrilled and honored that I was nominated for Best Short Story for “Cold Beer No Flies”, from Florida Happens. I think one of the biggest surprises to me in my career thus far is that award recognition from the mainstream mystery community has primarily come to me for short stories; I was nominated for a Macavity for “Survivor’s Guilt” and then an Anthony. (I won an Anthony for Best Anthology for Blood on the Bayou.) I’ve been writing a lot of short stories over the past few years–more so than in general; usually I simply will write a short story or find one I’ve worked on at some point when there’s a call for submissions for an anthology. I am hoping to pull together another collection of stories–its current working title is Once a Tiger and Other Stories, but that will inevitably have to change, unless I can come up with something different for “Once a Tiger”; the original concept of the story doesn’t seem to work–and last night I did get an idea for a new version (I’ll undoubtedly finish writing the other, only with a different title) which is something more workable, I think, and I also like the idea of Chanse finally dealing with his past with his fraternity at LSU.

I have a board phone call this morning, and I have to do a live on-line reading tonight for another story, “The Dreadful Scott Decision,” from Peter Carlaftes’ anthology The Faking of the President. I have yet to work myself up into a state of complete and utter anxiety about this yet, but there’s still plenty of time. I hope to carve some time out this afternoon to rehearse–but one can never be certain, can one, that you won’t stumble over words when you read your work out loud, which is always mortifying. This afternoon I intend to do some work–I am debating the wisdom of going to the gym, which is probably not wise; but my body really needs to exercise….

I also want to work on the Secret Project, now that I’ve found my character’s voice, and I also need to clean and get organized; I also need to go to Office Depot at some point and buy an ink cartridge for my printer and a new journal, as the current one is filling up. And at some point, I should go back through all the new journals to look for notes and so forth on projects–and ideas I scribbled down in the heat of the moment in order to write later.

All right, these dishes arent’t going to do themselves, so let me get started on that mess.

And until tomorrow, have a lovely weekend, Constant Reader, and as always, thanks for checking in.

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I Don’t Know What You Want But I Can’t Give It Anymore

And so it is now Wednesday, and we’re already about halfway finished with this week. Isn’t that lovely? Of course, I always hear my mother’s voice in the back of my head whenever I say things like that–you know you’re just wishing your life away when you do that–ah, my mother. Someday I’ll stop hearing her voice in my head.

Although I still do and am staring down fifty-nine this year, so chances are that voice is never going to get out of my head.

We finished watching Little Fires Everywhere, and I have to say, Reese Witherspoon makes a terrific villainess. It’s extremely well done–the writing and acting are top notch–and it really is amazing what you can do with a soap-opera style plot with strong writing and an excellent cast and good directing. As I watched, I couldn’t help thinking what a great Abby Reese Witherspoon would make in a reboot of Knots Landing. But I do encourage everyone to watch. It’s a terrific show, Kerry Washington is also fantastic, as are all the young actors playing the teenagers, and while it reminded me some of Big Little Lies, it’s a completely different plot and a completely different story–although the character Witherspoon plays is remarkably similar in both (although in Big Little Lies she never went completely to the dark side the way she did in this). It also handles class and race and gender issues over the course of the story, showing that it can be done–and done well–with the right creative team in place, particularly if they are committed to properly handling the issues.

Now I think tonight we’ll go back to Gold Digger–I think the next two episodes dropped Monday–and see if it continues to hold our interest as well.

I slept deeply and well last night. I woke up at seven this morning, and was actually awake, but chose to lightly nap in bed for another hour because the bed felt so relaxing and comfortable–plus, I wasn’t really feeling the day, you know? The longer I stayed in bed relaxing the longer I could put off dealing with anything this morning. Not that there is anything I don’t want to deal with– as I am particularly fortunate in that nothing I have to deal with is terrible; I just get lazy periodically–which is why being described as hard working or prolific amuses me endlessly. Granted, I hold myself to a much higher standard than perhaps I should; on the other hand, sometimes I think I wouldn’t get nearly as much done if I were easier, and kinder, on myself.

I also started rereading House of Many Shadows by Barbara Michaels this week, and I am now getting to the meat of the story; all the characters are in place, in the enormous house in the Pennsylvania countryside; it’s established that Meg, the heroine, has been in a car accident that caused some sort of brain damage which causes her to have either visual or audial hallucinations; the caretaker of the place is the owner’s stepson, whom she knew when they were children and didn’t like each other; and the previous tenants were evicted and not happy about it. It’s interesting–I’ve been very careful with Bury Me in Shadows to not mimic Barbara Michaels, and yet…in rereading this one I realize how incredibly similar the set-up of my work-in-progress is to this particular Michaels novel. Not that I’m plagiarizing her by any means, and there are only so many story situations and set-ups one can come up with; but similar enough for me to be a teeny bit concerned.

And now, back to the spice mines.

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I Get Along

One thing I definitely dislike about getting older is that the weekends feels shorter. They aren’t shorter, of course, but I am generally so worn out by the week that Saturdays end up being a waste because I have little to no energy to commit to anything. I inevitably run an errand or so, and then wind up being so worn down from that and the week that I wind up getting very little to nothing done. I made groceries–it was in the sixties(!)–and then came home, made us lunch, and then collapsed into my easy chair, watching television for the rest of the day; we watched a second episode of Gold Digger before moving on to Deadwood Fell, with David Tennant, which was quite good (the next two episodes of Gold Digger drop tomorrow), and then we caught the first episode of Little Fires Everywhere, which is very good–although Reese Witherspoon seems to be making a career out of playing adult Tracy Glicks. She does it very well, mind you, but she might want to think about doing something different. (We still haven’t watched The Morning Show on Apple Plus, which I’ve heard good things about. We’re caught up on Defending Jacob, but I’m not sure if we’ll finish, frankly; other than out of a sense of needing completion.) We also watched Bad Education on HBO with Hugh Jackman and Alison Janney–both of whom were terrific in their roles, but the story wasn’t told particularly well, if that makes sense? (As you can see, I spent most of yesterday in my easy chair with my lap blanket and the remote control close at hand.)

As such, I have a shit ton of work that I need to get done today. I’d like to get this first draft of “Falling Bullets” finished, some work done on the Secret Project, and some more work done on some other stories I am working on, and it’s probably not a bad idea for me to get organized this morning, either. The kitchen is still a big, disgraceful mess–must do the dishes and clean off the counters, maybe clean out a couple of drawers or something–and as always, there’s reading I’d like to do. Probably after I finished writing this, I’ll retire to my easy chair with Thunder on the Right for about an hour or so, to finish waking up (always a risk, though, because I could get caught up in the story and want to keep reading) and really, there’re few things better than reading with your morning coffee, is there? But yes, this sloppy, messy kitchen/office area is too much to be borne.

It’s in the sixties again outside this morning, with today’s high project to be 76 degrees. It seems weird to have the weather be this lovely and cool in early May–because usually the lows are in the high seventies and the highs in the upper eighties by this time of year. Before it was moved up to coincide with the Williams Festival, Saints and Sinners always fell on Mother’s Day weekend, and everyone (from everywhere else) always seemed to have issues with the heat and humidity; which naturally made us locals giggle into our sleeves. But while yesterday was kind of gray, the sun is back today, and that also helps–the cool weather and haziness rather played into my torpor. But this bright sunshiny morning seems to be precisely what the doctor ordered; the cool of last evening helped me sleep deeply and well, and I feel more myself this morning than I did yesterday. Adapting to being older has not been an easy thing for me; and while I appreciate the fact that most people don’t realize I’m pushing sixty, I can tell. Whereas the weekend used to be two wonderful days of cleaning and writing and editing and getting things checked off my to-do list; now I must always spend Saturday recovering from the week’s work and schedule, recharging my batteries in hopes that Sunday will make up for the loss of a day’s work to the recovery process.

I hate when my batteries run down, quite frankly. It’s rather unpleasant to have very little energy, but it’s even worse as a reminder that I am not as young as I might internally think I still am. I don’t believe youth is wasted on the young, as so many others occasionally will say or as the axiom states; but when you are young you never really think about what it’s going to feel like, be like, when you’re older. I probably wouldn’t have ever believed that my energy would have limits at some point; that I would need to conserve it from time to time in order to have a productive day.

One of the stories I sent out this past week has already been rejected, but I received a personal rejection rather than the standard one that comes through the Submittable program, which was quite lovely, with an explanation of why they couldn’t use it. I knew that story might have problems being placed; I probably should just submit it to the Saints and Sinners short story contest and be done with it. But it’s a good story and the editor really liked it; it just “wasn’t right for their audience”–whatever that means. I am choosing to believe the personal note rejection was a good sign; the not right for our audience catch-all is a polite way of getting out of getting into specifics. But, ironically, whereas rejections always used to send me spinning into spirals of why am I doing this I have no talent why do I keep beating my head against this wall I am taking encouragement from it; even if it is self-delusion.

Self-delusion isn’t always, after all, a bad thing.

And there are certainly worse things to be self-deluded about, quite frankly.

And now, to the easy chair with Mary Stewart for an hour.

Have a lovely Mother’s Day, Constant Reader!

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Domino Dancing

I was very tired yesterday for most of the day, with the end result of not going to make groceries on my way home–an odious chore that has now defaulted to today. I slept very well last night, for the first time in a couple of nights, and slept later than I’d intended. I woke up at seven this morning, as is my wont, and I thought, oh just a few more minutes, the bed feels lovely and the next thing I knew it was after eight. I also feel like I could have stayed in bed for the rest of the morning without the slightest quibble or problem. But I peeled myself out of the bed and am now drinking my first cup of coffee. I was too tired last night when I got home to do much of anything, either, so I pretty much stayed in my easy chair for most of the night. We’re giving up on Defending Jacob, because the plot isn’t making much sense–it kind of went off the rails, which is a shame; it’s done very well and has a remarkable cast, but there’s only so much you can do with a script and plot that don’t really work all that well. It’s a shame, since I love both Chris Evans and Michelle Dockery, but the material didn’t do right by them. We then started watching Dead to Me–the second season dropped yesterday–but while Christina Applegate (whom I love) and Linda Cardellini are pitch perfect, again, the story of season two didn’t grab either one of us, so we moved on to an Acorn show, Gold Digger, starring Julia Ormond, as a recently divorced, wealthy woman of sixty who has fallen for a handsome young man the age of her oldest son–and naturally, her children aren’t terribly thrilled about this. It isn’t clear if her lover actually loves her or is a gold digger; there are only two episodes, so I guess we’ll find out tonight.

Yesterday was an interesting day on social media. Shitstorms aplenty and as always, lots of foolishness. Rather than try to explain, I will send you to S. A. Cosby’s response to the attacks and outrage from “y/a twitter” (most of whom are pieces of shit, quite frankly) about ALA Booklist using the cover of his upcoming novel Blacktop Wasteland (which is getting the kind of advance buzz you don’t see very often in this business; similar to the buzz that built for Gone Girl and Rob Hart’s The Warehouse last year). You can see his response here, or if you’d rather, you can read the entire response not as a thread on Booklist’s website, right here. Perhaps the best thing about the entire controversy (which still makes my blood boil a little bit) is the incredible self-own of so-called “woke y/a twitter” to the cover of a crime novel written by a man of color and centering a man of color being featured on the cover of the American Library Association’s trade publication. I want you to sit and think about that for a moment: the American  Library Association. Which means librarians were the ones who saw it and became “outraged”, and therefore decided ALA needed to change the cover….LIBRARIANS. I’ve noticed over the years that “y/a Twitter” is borderline trash; they’ve already taken over the world of y/a publishing, obviously, and have decided that they, and only they, can anoint and crown the proper authors and the proper books; and the elitism and privilege on display is horrifying. Libraries, after all, are the key to the success or failure of y/a as a general rule; the librarians come after you, and your book, and you’re done. Y/A Twitter has done this before–there are at least three novels I can think of that they have come for; in one case, the book was pulled to be revised and I don’t remember what happened to the other two, frankly, after they were charged with racism and otherism (one was called The Black Witch–you can tell by the title it had a target painted on it almost from the font); I’d always meant to go read those books to see for myself how problematic they actually were (while recognizing that I read through a lens of white privilege). This happened to a friend of mine who wrote a book with a trans character; he got a detail wrong and y/a Twitter came for him and his book–the charge led by a trans librarian whose own book, I might add, was released recently to much applause from y/a Twitter. You see how insidious this is? How the self-righteous Madame Defarges and their knitting needles can pick and choose whose book is going to do well and whose isn’t?

And yet, for all their “woke” screaming and screeching about how “we need diverse books” and “own voices”–they have no problem rewarding straight white women writing books about queer youth for mainstream presses, while ignoring the work being done by actual queer voices writing about actual queer youth, rather than the nice straight white suburban lady’s view of what queer youth is. Only those published by the Big 5 need apply, as well–actual books about queer youth being written by actual queer people and being published by queer presses? Ignored, pushed away and aside–those books don’t matter (because obviously, if you aren’t published by the Big 5, clearly you don’t matter). God forbid the same straight white woman write about any other marginalized community; then they would be cultural appropriators and buried under a firestorm of angry tweets….but it’s perfectly okay for them to write about queer people.

Interesting, isn’t it?

One of the reasons I’ve recently decided to change the age of my main character in Bury Me in Shadows from seventeen to twenty-three was because I knew ALA and y/a Twitter would ignore the book completely; a book about a queer seventeen year old by a queer writer and published by a queer press? Not queer enough and not important enough–but by all means let’s applaud some books by straight women writing about teenaged gay male eunuchs who are just looking for love and romance. Straight y/a characters, of course, are allowed to experience love and lust and desire; gay characters have to be eunuchs…because, you know, gay sex is actually kind of icky, right, ladies?

I kind of have mixed feelings about the ALA, to be honest. I love libraries, and I love librarians, who are actually kind of fierce and usually are out there on the front lines every day fighting for the First Amendment and against the banning of books. But when I had my own experience with suppression and so forth; the ALA sat aside and pretended it wasn’t happening. I actually wrote to the ALA asking for help in that situation. They didn’t respond. Neither did Lambda Literary, for that matter, or any of the gay press. I wasn’t a big enough Hollywood star to merit any attention for what was actually happening from either Out or The Advocate–which have been joke publications cine before the turn of the century–but when push came to shove, not a word of support, nothing. The Publishing Triangle in New York and the ACLU took some action…but I can honestly say there’s no worse feeling than being targeted by a right-wing hate group, smeared and slandered by said hate group, and seeing ALA and Lambda Literary sit on their hands and pretend like it wasn’t happening. The great irony is that in the spring of 2006, well after this all had happened, ALA came to New Orleans–the first major conference to return to the city after the flood–and asked me to do a reading at one of their events. I did it, of course–but the whole “we did nothing at all while you and your work were under attack, but please, come read to our conference” kind of left me with a seriously bad taste in my mouth.

But y/a Twitter? As they pat themselves on the backs for their “wokeness”, they can all fucking go to hell and burn there for all eternity. By all means, keep promoting the people who kiss your ass and build up the books by your friends; because that’s really what ALA should be all about, right? Gatekeeping?

Disgraceful.

It is also very important to add to this that even after it was repeatedly pointed out to them by actual crime writers that it was 1) a book cover 2) a book by a man of color and 3) the cover was one that the author loved, they doubled down, refused to listen, and insisted that the cover was offensive and racist.

Yes, that’s right: y/a Twitter got a man of color’s book cover taken off the cover of ALA Booklist because they thought it was racist.

As for me, well, I cannot wait to read Blacktop Wasteland, which you can order right here. Cosby’s first novel, My Darkest Prayer, was a revelation; and I honestly believe Cosby is destined to become one of crime fiction’s biggest stars. Blacktop Wasteland is going to be one of the books of the year–it’s getting starred reviews all over the place; the reason it was selected to be on the cover of the magazine in the first fucking place was because of the great review it got in Booklist, and their staff recognizing how important of a book it’s going to be this year.

Today I have to go get groceries because I was too tired to do so yesterday; I was tired all day for some reason, and I just got more and more tired the longer the day progressed. Maybe that was why I was so not into anything we were trying to watch last night; but I did manage to read another chapter of Thunder on the Right, and I did get another thousand words done on “Falling Bullets”–which I also want to try to get finished this morning before the Rouse’s run. There was a wonderful storm last night–lots of thunder and torrential rain, which I always enjoy and always helps me sleep better–and it looks hazy out there this morning. There’s branch and tree debris all over our sidewalk, so there was clearly some strong wind last night as well.

And on that note, back to the spice mines.

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