Tag: high school

Just What I Needed

Monday and back to the office with me today. Yesterday was nice and relaxing; I worked on writing for a while, didn’t do as many chores as I should have, and watched a couple of shows. I didn’t want to get out of bed again this morning–no surprise there–and am a little bummed to not have another day off as of yet. But I’ll survive, as I always do, which is no more than I should expect, one supposes. It’s hard to believe that it’s August and my birthday is looming, as is football season and Bouchercon is also coming to New Orleans the first week of next month. I’ve got a lot to get done in the month of August, and I really need to buckle down and apply my nose to said grindstone. It’s just tough when you have to battle fatigue and exhaustion all the time.

We watched the Netflix documentary series Amy Bradley Is Missing, which was interesting and terribly sad at the same time. I cannot imagine the pain of having a family member disappear without a trace the way Amy Bradley did off that cruise ship. As a disappearance of a family member is the crucial plot element of a book I am researching to write at some point in the future (The Summer of Lost Boys), watching this kind of counted as research for that, as it gave me insight as to how a working class family would react to such an occurrence and how the family would be permanently damaged….which also got me thinking about aftermaths to crime and horror stories. How do you go on with your life after fighting supernatural threats? Or after being a murder suspect? Or having someone close to you commit a serious and most heinous crime?

After dinner, we started watching a new Mexican erotic thriller series on Netflix, whose title translates to Unspeakable Sins. Like all Spanish-language erotic thriller series, there’s plenty of sex and nudity; we only watched three episodes (there’s two seasons of nine episodes each) but even trying to summarize the plot thus far–but the primary plot concerns Helena, a wealthy woman in a very controlling marriage to an older man, who starts having an affair with a very hot young escort, whom she convinces to flirt with her bisexual husband so they can get video of the two of them together and she can use the video as leverage to divorce him. Ivan pretends to be a journalist doing a story on Claudio, Claudio is attracted to him, but things go south–they fight and Ivan’s story is he ran away. But there’s blood all over the house and Claudio is now missing…can Ivan trust Helena or is she playing him for a fool, setting him up to take the fall for his murder?

That’s the primary story, but there are subplots as well that are just as intense.

Ivan is played by gorgeous Andres Baida. I mean…

Sexy Andres Baida
He was also in Control Z and Who Killed Amy?

Gorgeous, just gorgeous.

I also spent some time processing seeing friends from high school that I hadn’t seen in almost fifty years. (The fact that it’s been almost fifty years since I graduated from high school also needs processing, but that will have to wait until I am done with this initial processing.) Every time I’ve had a conversation with someone from high school in the last thirty years–it’s not often and it’s not many–how they remember me, and high school, are vastly different from how I remember things, but they also never knew how miserable and unhappy I was. I always put on a good face; I always try to make the best out of every situation I find myself dealing with as they come up, especially when it’s not something you can change or alter in any meaningful way. As I’ve stated before, I’ve always thought I was odd-looking and never really had a fit body until I was in my thirties. But…seeing pictures from back then…I was wrong about how I looked (I’ve always been wrong about that, frankly) and my impact on other people. Both women remember me as having a really muscular fit body and being handsome and very kind and considerate and thoughtful–and funny; I’ve always been funny.

And I did work on writing yesterday. I edited another piece and wrote out what changes need to be made to it to make it stronger. I also did some laundry and a load of dishes, but didn’t pick up too much of the mess in the apartment. I do enjoy spending down time with Paul and Sparky, and really wish we were both retired and just hanging out around the apartment all day. Paul likes to be busy, though, so I do think he will take some adjusting if and when he finally does retire. I won’t be retiring for another few years yet; not going at 65, much as I would like to, so I have to get my shit together leading up to when I finally do.

After work today, I have to make groceries on the way home, and I’m hoping to do some writing tonight before we jump back into Unspeakable Sins.

So on that note, I am heading into the spice mines. Have a lovely Monday, Constant Reader, and I’ll be checking in with you again in the morning.

I’m In Touch With Your World

Sunday morning and I didn’t want to get out of bed this morning. Sparky, of course, had opinions, so I got up and fed him and had a cup of coffee and now am feeling a bit run down this morning. I think after I post this I am going to repair to the easy chair for the rest of the morning, and do some reading before settling into the saddle to write. I didn’t write yesterday–I ran all my errands in the morning and then spent the rest of the day cleaning and organizing everything we bought/had delivered on Friday. We finished watching The Hunting Wives (more on that later), and then caught up on the news before I got ready to meet some people for dinner (more on that later). After dinner I came home and fell asleep in said easy chair, and Paul had to wake me so I could go to bed.

And here we are.

I really enjoyed The Hunting Wives, which was Dynasty-like in its over-the-top characters and storylines. The first season ended on a cliffhanger, and a humdinger of one at that, with a body being buried in the woods. The show was full of twists and turns and surprises, but I was pretty sure who the killer was and, he typed modestly, I was proven right. I did doubt myself a few times, but every time someone else would all under suspicion, I couldn’t figure how that person–despite their motive and their actions–could have done it. Brittany Snow was amazing as lead character Sophie, and overall, the entire cast was excellent in their roles. I’m going to probably read the book at some point, now. Perhaps another new-to-me author I am going to enjoy? I don’t need more authors to read at this point, but…I kind of want to see how different the book is from the show.

So, last night I had dinner with two women I went to high school with in Kansas and their husbands. It was nice to reconnect with the distant past once again–I graduated from high school almost fifty years ago, and maybe the most interesting thing about said reconnection is hearing how people you went to high school saw you back then as well as what they remember. We’re always so certain that people see us the way we see ourselves, aren’t we? I was, for the most part, miserable for the most part when I was in high school, for any number of reasons, but I always thought, you know, like I was weird-looking and there was the gay thing and being dorky and all of that. It’s strange to hear contradictory opinions to what I was so roundly convinced was true, you know?

Not to mention seeing people who knew me when I had hair. I don’t encounter that very often.

So, it was very nice, actually. I’m still processing it all, to be honest, but…I’m glad I made the time to meet them all for dinner.

And on that note, I am heading into the spice mines. Have a lovely Sunday, and I’ll be back on the morrow.

Adrian Zmed

Excitable

Ah, Thursday. Last day in the office for the week, and it should be a good day, methinks. We’re in another heat advisory with thunderstorms hitting periodically through the day. (It also rained yesterday, which was a surprise.) I stopped and made groceries on the way home from work, despite being fairly tired–my legs were fatigued and a bit sore all day for some reason that escapes me–but I slept well last night and feel pretty good–if groggy–with my coffee this morning. I didn’t write yesterday–I was tired when I got home, but did some chores anyway–but am hoping to get back in the saddle tonight. Fingers crossed, but my lower body doesn’t feel fatigued this morning so I think that’s a good sign.

It’s actually pleasant outside this morning–I just took out the trash–but as I said, we’re in a heat advisory which will hit us later on. I’m going to have groceries delivered tomorrow, and after my work-at-home duties we are making our biweekly Costco run. It should be a good weekend. A couple of old friends from high school in Kansas are going to be in town this weekend, so may get to see them at some point, and I should be able to get work done and the apartment cleaned this weekend as well as get some rest. I’m glad that I feel good on the fourth morning of the week in the office; that certainly bodes well for the rest of the weekend. I do need to write this weekend, so I can’t be the lazy slug that I would prefer to be. Sigh.

But at least I got the dishes done last night! I’ll put them away after work tonight, as I need to straighten up the kitchen for on-line department meeting tomorrow. I think I’ve permanently blurred out the background for my on-line things, but one never knows.

I also reread something that I need to get revised sooner rather than later, which made me think about my writing process and how the drafts actually go. I always do the first draft in my own voice; I haven’t gotten a firm grasp on the characters yet, so have to go back in other drafts to hone the character’s voice and erase mine. Future drafts are to clean up language, catch discrepancies and fix them (which is becoming harder as I get older because my memory is getting so bad). I also rework the earlier chapters a lot more than I do the later ones, primarily because the voice starts making its presence known the further I get into the book, so I don’t need to rework the voice as much in the later chapters.

Even if it’s a little bit, I consider it a win when I write something fictional, or work on something for which I’ve already done a first draft, or a partial first draft–there are so many of these in the files, seriously; it’s past time to let go of some of them and accept I may never ever get around to writing them.

And on that note, I am heading into the spice mines. Have a lovely Thursday, and I rather doubt that I will be back later today! Check for me again tomorrow morning.

Hawaiian Wedding Song

I am a bit tired this morning. All those errands I ran yesterday? Apparently I have not recovered my stamina yet, because I am feeling it this morning. My legs are very tired, and I did not want to get out of bed this morning…which was also partly because Sparky turned into a purring cuddlebug while trying to get me to get up–lying on me and rolling and purring and head butts and making biscuits. It was actually kind of lovely, really, but now I am up, a load of laundry is started, and I am drinking and loving my coffee. LSU is competing for the national championship in Gymnastics at 3, which is probably going to suck all the oxygen out of the day, so I’ll need to get a lot of things done today before three, won’t I? GEAUX TIGERS!

Yesterday was a rather interesting day, social media-wise. After I posted yesterday morning and as I was getting ready to dive into the day, I shared the post on my social media as I always do, and I had some extreme irritations, all related to my years in Kansas, of all things; like all this writing and thinking about Kansas and ideas for books/stories there manifested some people I went to high school with, as well as some other unpleasantness. For the record, straight white cisgender, this is the sort of thing we’re talking about when we talk about microaggressions and safe spaces. The first thing that popped up at me on Facebook was some tired old bitch of a white woman’s post sharing an interview with Dawn French, in which she not only defended the Chatelaine of Castle TERF, but chastised everyone. After all, as a straight cisgender white woman, it’s our responsibility as queer people to explain it all to HER, and if we’re not willing to do so, their lack of understanding is on US.

Fuck off, Dawn French. Queer people don’t have to explain their humanity to you, you miserable fucking bigoted bitch. “Well, I don’t understand this, so please explain to me why you deserve to be treated like a human being.” That’s it right there. Doesn’t sound so nice when it’s put that way, does it? Is it really too much for you to treat other people with respect and kindness even if you “don’t get it”? And when exactly do I get my fucking paycheck for explaining our HUMANITY to someone with a blackened, dead soul and no empathy for anything outside their own experience? The arrogance!

Anyway, this former Facebook friend shared this and said, “I agree.” Someone else, another former Facebook friend, commented “Yes, absolutely.” I unfriended and blocked both, and then posted in my anger “If you are a defender of the Chatelaine of Castle TERF, just unfriend me now.” Another former Facebook friend then announced his departure. He only unfriended, so I blocked his homophobic ass, too.

As if that wasn’t enough, someone I went to high school posted a funny meme I was going to comment on, when a homophobic piece of trash from high school tried TAGGING me on it because I had unfriended her after getting sick and fucking tired of her MAGA posts and remembered the time I heard my “friend” mocking me with other people in the high school cafeteria for being gay. Again, I don’t owe anyone any explanations for cutting you out of my life because I fucking refuse to explain why I deserve to be treated like a human being and not as the butt of a joke or something to hate and despise because a verse in Leviticus says so.

Jesus, right? It’s so tiring.

And then, in the biggest irony of ironies, another person I went to high school with–who is always posted queer ally stuff, which I’ve always appreciated–did so again yesterday further down on my feed, and of course someone had to come in waving their cross and Bible, but what was truly nice was seeing how many people went after the Bible-thumper, quoting the Bible and the Sermon on the Mount back to her, and it was on that thread I discovered she had a younger sibling that is gay (I wasn’t the only one to graduate from that school, apparently) and then someone else from high school commented “My brother is gay, too”–and the irony of that was almost too delicious to savor. You see, the second “my brother is gay” poster? She and her troglodyte best friend loved called me a fag quite often and quite happily my senior year…and while that was satisfying enough, I then remembered that she and her bitch friend would say it and laugh…in front of her brother….so his situation was worse than mine, and I went from smug to sad. Her brother was also an asshole to me (which I understand; I avoided other kids who got slandered and mocked and called that), but knowing that he was gay and was listening to his sister and that other bitch call me that? How he must have hated himself every time she said it. I wonder how suicidal he was? And truly, how sad was it that we are so socialized to avoid other kids with that same stigma and shame we experience rather than supporting each other? I think that’s also one of the many reasons I have trouble trusting gay men as I do straight people–another kid who was gay-presenting at my high school in the suburbs and was friends with people who treated me like shit….out of curiosity I looked him up and he too is out and proud now. How sad he joined in so his friends wouldn’t think he was a fag, too.

But at the same time, it’s giving me an insight into Kansas that I didn’t have before. The state, which I should have known, isn’t full of homophobic MAGA trash, and neither is the area I lived and suffered through for five years. And that could make for an interesting approach to another book. I had thought Sara, with my out gay character in a rural Kansas high school, was a bit much–I didn’t think kids could be out there–and turns out that while it’s not appreciated, those brave kids are facing it all down and defiantly throwing it back in their tormenters’ faces. I actually even thought for a moment last night that it might be worth it to go back sometime, to just look around and see how different everything is from my old memories.

And on that note, I am going to get cleaned up and going on my day. I may be back later, I really do want to get all of these draft posts finished and out of the drafts file at some point, but I also don’t know how the day will play out so we’ll just have to see, Constant Reader. Have a great Saturday regardless.

Teen Beat

Ah, being a teenager. A lot of people look back on their teen years through rose-colored glasses, always smiling wistfully about the ‘best times’ of their lives. This always makes me reel back from the screen; it’s unfathomable to me that people miss being in high school. I made the best of high school, as I always try to make the best of every situation I find myself in, willingly or no; but you do eventually reach the point where you are so sick of the bullshit and the bullies and the assholes that it can’t end soon enough. I managed to make the best of high school all the way up until the second semester of my senior year, when I just reached the breaking point and just didn’t fucking care anymore–about my classmates, the other kids, the teachers, everything. I kept making the best of Kansas for another year or so–and when my parents were transferred while I was in college to California, I didn’t even think twice about deciding to leave Kansas in my rear view mirror.(I’ve also never been back since that snowy February night when I boarded Amtrak and headed west, either, other than in my fiction.) So, you’re probably wondering why I write about Kansas; why I dig into all those unpleasant memories and the horrible way I used to feel every day. In some ways, I suppose, it’s therapeutic; dealing with the memories and processing them now that I’m older, more centered and stable, and no longer hate myself. But…those are the important memories for writing about teenagers, which I do fairly regularly.

It’s always important to process your traumas by writing about them, I suppose.

It’s work-at-home Friday and Gregalicious slept a little late this morning. I was very tired last night–even fell asleep in my easy chair around ten, woke up just before eleven, and then proceeded home. I was too tired after work to get much done around here, or to do any writing, so I will definitely have to make up for that today and this weekend, once the work duties are done. I also have to get to the gym this morning to get back to the working out. After the Festivals and Paul got sick, my hands were a bit full and working out after being pronounced healed just wasn’t possible. Now I have to get back into it, adding a couple of back and chest exercises into the mix, and even having an official Leg Day work out, so as I get my strength and stamina back I can start using heavier weights and gradually get myself back to the point where I can workout the way I used to, before all the injuries and depression and so forth all kicked me off the gym wagon; hopefully by the summer I’ll be able to get myself back into some semblance of good physical condition again.

I suspect the tired thing will never go away.

We started watching Ripley last night around the Fayetteville Regional for NCAA Gymnastics, which LSU won while not having their best night, and I have to say I am enjoying it thus far. It’s a slow burn, but it’s incredibly stylish, and the black-and-white cinematography is terrific. The shots are amazing, and Andrew Scott manages to give Tom an air of menace, a kind of emotional flatness Matt Damon couldn’t have pulled off in the Minghella film version. I think part of the reason for the steady slow burn of the plot is because there’s not a lot of material…the book is actually very short (Highsmith was never wordy and rarely wasted time on back story), and my sense is that Scott’s Tom is much more like Highsmith’s ideation than the Minghella film. With all the comparisons made of Saltburn to Ripley, I’ve been thinking about the book and the Minghella film again, and this Netflix version seems like the Ripley Hitchcock would have made, which makes it more interesting to me. At first I was a little bummed not to see the Amalfi Coast in color; Italy is so beautiful, after all, but the black and white gives it a more pristine and polished look that is beautiful in an entirely different way. I’m looking forward to watching the rest of the show to see how it flows and develops–as well as comparing it to the book, the Matt Damon film, and Saltburn. It actually has made me rather happy that I haven’t finished my essay on Saltburn yet.

And on that note, I am heading into the spice mines for the day. Have a lovely Friday, and I may check in again later.

Always

Wednesday, and somehow Pay the Bills Day kind of snuck up on me unawares. That’s probably not a bad thing; it certainly means I am not living paycheck-to-paycheck (at least for the moment), which means a lot less stress (there are few things more stressful than money problems) for the time being.

And yes, I am thoroughly enjoying being free of that stress for the time being. I am sure at some point it will return with a vengeance, hence my embrace of the current status.

I’ve recently been immersed in #shedeservedit this past week or so; the final round of edits came in from my editor, and no sooner had I gone over them, rereading the entire thing yet again, then the page proofs dropped into my inbox. I actually have more time than usual to get these done–which is quite lovely and marvelous–and this of course is only checking for typos and mistakes and missing words, etc. But it’s been weird spending so much time in Kansas again in my head lately.

Immersing myself into that world has also been an interesting experience; particularly when you take into consideration how much different the story is now than where it was at when I first wrote it. It was, sadly, inspired by the viral rape cases in Steubenville, Ohio and Marysville, Missouri; much as I hate to admit this, the sexual assault of teenaged girls by their classmates etc. wasn’t really on my radar until those stories went viral–and of course, the Stanford swimmer rapist. All three cases horrified me to the very core of my being; and given that the only recourse I had to effect change was to write about it, I decided to start writing what I obliquely referred to as “the Kansas book” for a very long time (despite the fact that I had always titled it #shedeservedit).

Ah, Kansas.

We moved to Kansas when I was fourteen (I turned fifteen later that summer between my sophomore and junior years of high school). To say it was a bit of a culture shock is putting it mildly. The entire state of Kansas is less populous than Chicago, and the biggest town (small city) in the county was smaller than the suburb where we had lived. I don’t know how many students my suburban high school had, but the building itself was enormous and we basically had a campus; the town library was on the property and we had a field house by the football field, with locker rooms for the home and away teams. My high school in Kansas had 180 students, and my class, the largest in school history, had 48 kids. The school was simply a lobby, a single hallway for the classrooms, and a gym, which had a stage for plays at one end of the basketball court. Our hall lockers didn’t even have locks–which was unimaginable at my former school. We actually lived in a very small town (population 942) about eight miles north of the county seat; that town was the second largest one in the county. My high school was consolidated; five small towns and all the farms in the community sent their kids there–it was sixteen miles from where we lived.

Kansas, and my high school there, had a profound influence on me in many ways. I had taken a creative writing class at my former school–got an A, and some praise from the teacher, but nothing overwhelming–but it was in Kansas where I really started writing. My English class required us to write papers my junior year; my teacher very generously allowed me to write fiction, and so I did. Everyone in my class loved the stories I wrote, and my teacher, the hallowed Mrs. Anderson, encouraged me to pursue writing as a vocation–which was the first time I ever had any kind of encouragement of any kind from anyone other than my grandmother to do so–and that was when I actually began to believe it was something that could happen for me; that I had the ability to tell stories and write and even possibly, at some point, get paid to do so and maybe even make a living doing it. (It only took more than twenty years after graduation, but I did eventually start getting paid to write; it was even my primary source of income for a very long time.)

The town in the book–Liberty Center (a nod to Philip Roth’s When She Was Good)–is obviously based very slightly on the county seat; mostly the geography more than anything else, as well as it also has a small college, a park on the way out of town just before a waterfall; and another park on the other side of town rumored to be a gay cruising spot. I’ve written about this town, and this county, a lot over the years, but the name of that town has changed numerous times–everything from Greenfield to Kahola to Carterville and finally, Liberty Center. (Sara, the first young adult novel I wrote chronologically, is also set in that same area; however the county seat in that book had a different name; Kahola, I think) I’ve not set foot in Kansas since we left for California in February 1981; so this is all from my memory, with an occasional glance at Google Earth or Google Maps. Obviously, everything there has changed dramatically in the forty years (!) since we got on Amtrak and headed west at two in the morning; I tended to stick to my actual memories than the reality of what has changed.

So, when these notorious sexual assault cases involving kids (sorry, I still, and will always, think of college students as kids too, YMMV) became so viral and so ever-present everywhere, I knew I finally had the story for the book I wanted to write in this fictional town–I’d made any number of false starts over the years; some of which may eventually became the seeds for other books–but I have always, always, wanted to write a book set there, and writing a toxic masculinity/rape culture book set there just seemed like the right way to go. I had everything in place that I wanted or needed to write the book; the only thing I didn’t know how to do was end it. So, as I mentioned the other day, I finished the last book I had under contract sometime in the spring of 2015, and took the month of July to write this first draft–96,000 words, nineteen chapters, and missing the concluding one. I didn’t get the story right in the first draft, but set it aside to do other things for awhile before coming back to it. I worked on it around other projects over the years since, and finally, last year, finally recognized the truth I’d been avoiding–it will never be finished unless you sign a contract for it with a deadline. And so I did, and now it will be released in January of this year.

And yes, the deadline was precisely the panicking terrified motivation I needed to make the changes to the story that made it gel and possible for me to write an ending.

And of course, as always, I have been plagued with doubts every step of the way while writing this: am I the right person to write this book? Is a white male the right person to do a book built around toxic masculinity and rape culture? Am I taking a spot in publishing away from someone who might be better qualified and better experienced to write such a novel?

But writing is about taking risks, and trying to push yourself. One of the reasons I started doing the stand-alone books all those years ago was because I worried about getting stale and bored writing my two series; originally, switching back and forth between them helped keep them fresh and new to me…but around 2009 I was starting to feel like those books were becoming repetitive (how many car accidents has Scotty been in?) and stale; that I didn’t have anything new or interesting to say about them. (I kind of am feeling that way with Scotty right now–Chanse has ended, although I may do some novellas with him; but am hopeful once I get everything done that I am working on currently that I can sit down and gather my thoughts on the next Scotty book into something interesting and cohesive and frankly, worthy of the character) I use the stand-alone books to push myself further as a writer, into exploring other things and voices and tenses, which I hope makes the series books better.

I guess we’ll have to see how that goes, won’t we?

And on that note, I am heading into the spice mines. Have a lovely Wednesday, everyone, and will check in with you again tomorrow.

The Long Run

Not only do I write two private eye series, erotica, and the occasional stand alone,  I also, sometimes, write what’s classified as young adult fiction. I have not published anything that could remotely be considered y/a in quite a while, and therein lies a tale (I think the last book I published that could be considered “young adult” was Dark Tide; I could be wrong. I no longer remember when and in what order my non-series books came out).

To be clear, the fact that I even call those books “y/a” even though I don’t really think of them as young adult fiction is a marketing thing, really; in my mind, they’re simply novels I wrote about teenagers. I started writing about teenagers when I actually was one; the stories I wrote in high school weren’t bad, for a teenager, and were the first indication–from my fellow classmates, and my English teacher–that I could seriously become a published writer if I chose to try to do so; the utter lack of seriousness my writing aspirations received from my family was kind of soul-crushing. But I always wanted to write about teenagers, from the very beginnings; I wanted to do my own Nancy Drew/Hardy Boys style series, and then progressed to other stories.

I progressed as a reader pretty quickly when I was growing up; I went from the series books, like the Hardy Boys and Nancy Drew, and the Scholastic Book Club mysteries, to Agatha Christie, Charlotte Armstrong, and Ellery Queen when I was around eleven or twelve, if not younger; I know I read both Gone with the Wind and Antonia Fraser’s Mary Queen of Scots when I was ten. The few books I read that were considered “children’s books” (there was no such thing as young adult fiction then) were books like The Outsiders and The Cat Ate My Gymsuit and I did enjoy them; I just didn’t think of them as either being particularly authentic or realistic. Nor did they have any bearing on my life, or the lives of my friends–I viewed them like youth-oriented television shows like The Brady Bunch, existing in some bizarre alternate universe that has no basis in actual reality or what those of us who were that age were actually experiencing. I always thought there was something missing–complicated and authentic books about the lives of real teenagers and the real issues they faced everyday, without getting into the insanity of the preachy-teachy “issue” books that usually wound up as ABC After-school Specials, which I loathed. 

Not all “issue books” were bad, in all fairness; some, like Lisa Bright and Dark, about a girl struggling with mental illness whose parents refused to face their daughter’s reality, so her friends tried to help her by serving as amateur psychologists, and  I Never Promised You a Rose Garden, about a teenaged girl in a mental hospital dealing with her illness were actually quite good. But I loved books like The Cheerleader, about a poor girl in a small New England town with ambitions and dreams that far exceeded those of most of her friends…dealing with issues of popularity, sex, and first love.  David Marlow’s Yearbook was also a favorite, and while not marketed to kids, was about high school, but had some themes and plot-lines considered far too heavy for teens to digest in the 1970’s. You can also see it in the pap that was considered movies for teenagers; G-rated bubble-gum like The Computer Wore Tennis Shoes, and inevitably came from Disney and starred Kurt Russell. (These movies are an interesting time capsule; I did try to watch one of them recently on Disney Plus and didn’t last three minutes in that squeaky clean, sex-free college environment.)

(Also, I would like to point out at this time there were terrific books being published in the 1970’s for teens that dealt with major issues and were groundbreaking; Sandra Scoppetone was writing about queer teens back then, and there were some others doing terrific work at the time–I just wasn’t aware of those books until much later.)

My first three young adult novels–Sorceress, Sleeping Angel, Sara–were written as first drafts in the early 1990’s, put in a drawer, and forgotten about for nearly twenty years. Sorceress  had no queer content in it at all; it was my version of the truly popular trope of romantic/domestic suspense where an orphaned girl goes to live in a spooky mansion far away from her old life (Jane Eyre, Rebecca, almost everything written by Victoria Holt), and slowly becomes aware that everything in the house isn’t as it seems. It was a lot of fun to write–I loved those books and I loved putting a modern spin on them. Sleeping Angel’s first draft was never completed, and the published version is vastly different than what the original first draft contained; there are still some vestiges of the original plot there in the book that are never truly explained, and by the time I realized, after many drafts, that I hadn’t removed those vestiges from the book it was too late to do anything about it other than hope no one noticed. The book did well, won an award or two, and is still a favorite of my readers, according to what I see on social media. One of the things I added to the story was a queer subplot about bullying, which is what I think readers truly responded to, and I also feel like adding that to the story in addition to the other changes I made to it made it a stronger book. Sara was always intended to have gay characters and a gay plot; I originally started writing it as a novel for adults and realized, over the course of writing it, that actually the teenage story was the most interesting part and I could deal with some issues there if I switched the focus of the book to the teenagers. One thing that changed from the 1991 first draft to the draft that was published is that the character I originally had being bullied for being gay, even though he wasn’t (another character, one of the biggest bullies, actually was), was actually not only gay but had come out, and so the book also talked about the reverberations of a popular football coming out, and what impact that had on the school social structure and hierarchy.

Sara, incidentally, is one of my lowest selling titles–which also kind of breaks my heart a little bit.

Since those three, there have been others I’ve written–Lake Thirteen, Dark Tide–and I’ve also dabbled in what is called “new adult fiction”–books about college-age or just out of college-age characters–this is where The Orion Mask and Timothy and the current one I’m working on, Bury Me in Shadows, fall on the marketing spectrum.

One of the questions I had to deal with in writing young adult novels with queer content was the question of sex. I had already been through being banned in Virginia because I had written gay erotica (a really long story that I revisited recently with Brad Shreve on his podcast; I really do need to write in depth about the entire experience); what would happen if ‘notorious gay porn writer’ Greg Herren began writing fiction specifically aimed at teenagers? But the truly interesting thing about being used as a political pawn by the right-wing fanatics in the power games they play is that once they’ve made use of you, they forget about you and move on. My young adult fiction was released without a single complaint, protest, or any of the sturm und drang that my speaking at a high school to a group of queer and queer-supportive youth created scant years earlier.

Interesting, isn’t it?

And yet…there is no sex in any of those books. None. I don’t  remember my gay teens even getting a chaste kiss, let alone a sex life, or fantasies, or a boyfriend.

And what about desire?

A couple of years ago someone tagged me on Facebook on an article about just that very subject; that was when I started writing this post (three yeara ago, looks like) but I never finished writing this until this morning.

Go ahead and read it. I’ll wait.

Okay, welcome back. Some interesting points, no?

Now, check out this one. 

I know, it’s a lot of information to process, but it’s something we should all be thinking about, particularly as the calls for diversity in publishing and popular culture continue. Sex is, quite obviously, a touchy subject when it comes to young adult fiction, but when it comes to questions of sexuality and being a sexual minority, what is too much and what is not enough? Even depictions of straight sexuality is frowned on and controversial when it comes to young adult fiction. (For the record, that is also considered the case for crime fiction–no explicit sex scenes–or at least so I was told when I was first getting started; doubly ironic that my mystery series were what the right-wing Virginian fanatics considered porn–I really do need to write about that.)

I also have noticed the elitism evident in hashtags like #ownvoices and #weneeddiversevoices that have come and gone and return periodically on Twitter; those actively involved in promoting those tags, when it comes to queer books, make it abundantly clear they only care about those published by the Big Five in New York–which is a good target, I agree, and they do need to be doing better when it comes to diversity and “own voices” work–but this focus also ignores the small presses, particularly the queer ones, who have been doing this work all along and making sure queer books were still being published for all ages and getting out there and made available to those who want and need them. I am absolutely delighted to see queer books by queers being published by the Big 5, and young adult work in particular…and yet…there are some serious issues still with the Big 5–and with what is called ” young adult Twitter”.

I do find it interesting to see who they decide are the “cool kids” and who they banish to the outer tables with the freaks and geeks.

It’s part of the reason I don’t engage with young adult twitter, to be honest. I really have no desire to return to the high school cafeteria at this point in my life.

And I’ll write about teenagers whenever there’s a story I want to tell involving teenagers–which currently is the Kansas book; I turned my protagonist in Bury Me in Shadows into a college student because it actually works better.

And on that note, tis back to the spice mines with me. (And huzzah for finally finishing this post!)

The Silky Veils of Ardor

As Constant Reader knows, Gregalicious loves short stories. He regrets deeply that they are much harder for him to write than novels (I’ve often joked that I find it much easier to write a novel than a short story; the word count limitations are hard for me as I always tend to write probably more than is needed to illustrate a particular point–take this sentence, for example), and I am sure part of this insecurity comes from my oft-told tale about my first writing professor, who earwormed his petty nastiness into my brain and soul. (But also this gives me an enormous sense of personal satisfaction in that I know I’ve published more fiction than he did during his time on this planet; to this date, I still cannot find a single fiction publication for the prick.)

And while I am a firm believer in the mentality that writers should always be paid–even if merely a token–for their work, I will often write short stories if requested, and don’t mind donating a story for a good cause. The two stories I had in Bouchercon anthologies weren’t paid, nor was my story for Murder-a-Go-Go’s; like I said, when I am asked to write a story I am genuinely so flattered that the editor thought enough of me and my work to ask. I like writing short stories, even if they are a struggle for me, and there aren’t many places where one can get them published these days.

I was enormously flattered to be asked by short story master Josh Pachter to write a story for his anthology of stories inspired by the music of Joni Mitchell. The irony, of course, is that while I am familiar with Ms. Mitchell and her work–and I like what I know of it–I am not as familiar with her canon as I am with women singer-songwriters like Stevie Nicks, Dolly Parton or Carole King; I also realized that the songs of hers that I could name off the top of my head–“Free Man in Paris”, “Help Me”, “Big Yellow Taxi”, etc.–were the same ones anyone could; I wanted something not quite as famous and perhaps a little more obscure, something to which a Joni Mitchell fan would say oh yes, of course you chose that song.

So, I did what I often do in these situations: I asked my friend Michael Thomas Ford (aka That Bitch Ford), and he immediately came back with “You should pick ‘The Silky Veils of Ardor.’ It’s about that hot guy all the high school girls fall in love with and breaks their hearts.”

That was definitely intriguing, so I looked up the lyrics and listened to the song several times as I listened to Joni’s sweet voice singing them…and I knew immediately what story I was going to tell.

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The elevator doors opened. Cautiously, her heart thumping in her ears, she stepped out into the hotel lobby and took a quick look around. At the front desk, a young woman in uniform was checking in a couple. They didn’t look familiar. But it had been so long since she’d seen any of them…would she recognize anyone?

She didn’t notice she was holding her breath.

She walked across the lobby to the hotel bar entrance. A reader board just outside said WELCOME BACK BAYVIEW HIGH CLASS OF 1992!

The black background was faded, the white plastic letters yellowed with age.

The urge to head back to the elevators and punch at the UP button until the doors opened, get back to her room and repack her suitcases—everything she’d just carefully put away neatly in drawers and hung in the closet—was strong. She resisted, recognized the need as irrational, closed her eyes, clenched her hands until she felt her ragged bitten nails digging into her palms.

You can do this you can do this you can do this you can do this….

A dull murmur came from the hotel bar, laughter and talking, the rattle of ice against glass, the whir of a blender. From where she stood, she could see the bar was crowded, cocktail waitresses in too-short black skirts and white blouses with trays balanced on one hand maneuvering expertly around groups of people.

Maybe no one there was from the reunion. Maybe she was early. Maybe—

You can do this!

She’d always had social anxiety. Had never made friends easily, couldn’t make small talk, sometimes said the wrong thing, alienated people without even knowing what she’d done. Parties and dances had always been agony. Even with friends, people she felt relatively certain actually did like her, there was always the irrational fear she’d say the wrong thing, forget a birthday, commit some horrific social faux pas that would turn them against her, show them what a damaged, worthless person she actually was. She’d started seeing a therapist after college, years after she should have, but her parents thought therapy was all touchy-feely mumbo-jumbo for the weak and all you had to do was suck it up and forget about it, not worry, lock it all away in some dark corner of your mind and move on.

I have never attended a high school reunion, and frankly, have little to no desire to ever do so–with no offense intended to anyone I went to high school with. Our school was very small and remote, for one thing–my graduating class had only 48 students, and at that point, were the largest graduating class in our high school’s history. It’s not easy to get there–one would have to fly into either Kansas City or Wichita, rent a car, and drive for at least an hour just to get to the county seat, and of course, my high school was about nineteen miles (give or take) north of the county seat. I do think about going back from time to time, more to take a look around and see what’s different now as opposed to then; to refresh my memories a bit for writing about the region–which I’ve done somewhat already, but not nearly as much as I could. Using Google Earth has already shown me that my memory is faulty–I’ve fallen into Google Earth wormholes frequently–so while there is some idle curiosity about going back, there’s very little desire or motivation. It’s difficult, I think, for my classmates to understand that I really don’t have much desire to revisit that time of my life; it’s certainly not their fault but the four or five years I spent in Kansas also contain some of the darkest periods of my life.

I wrote a short story about a high school reunion under my Todd Gregory pseudonym; “Promises in Every Star,” which eventually became the title story of my Todd Gregory collection. I first had the idea for that story when I received the invitation to my ten year reunion, back in 1988; the title is a lyric from one of my favorite til Tuesday songs, “Coming Up Close,” from my favorite album of theirs, Welcome Home, which I can listen to over and over again, and have, many times; it’s definitely in my Top Five favorite albums of all time. I don’t remember where I originally published that story, but it was many, many years later, after I had the original idea and wrote the first draft (in long hand), and after that, I figured I was finished with high school reunion stories.

Until “The Silky Veils of Ardor.”

As I listened to the song, the more the story began to take shape in my head; a high school reunion, twenty-five years later; returning to the town where she went to high school for the first time since she graduated and moved away with her family. I had already written the opening, for another short story; as I revised and retooled that particular story, the character grew and changed and wasn’t the timid, nervous, medicated woman she originally was–but I loved that original opening, and decided to lift it from the initial drafts of that story onto this one. I found the original word document of the first draft, erased everything after the opening few paragraphs, and renamed the file THE SILKY VEILS OF ARDOR. The rest of the story flowed out of me after I finished rereading and tweaking the original opening to fit the new story, and I was off and running. I revised the story several times, and one of the things, one of the points, I was trying to make with the story is about how differently we see high school than our friends and classmates did–which is an idea I’d been toying with after an exchange on social media with some of my classmates after I’d posted something–a status update or a blog post, or something along those lines–about how miserable I’d been in high school; my friends were all astonished because how I remembered high school was very different from the way they remembered it, and me. I remembered feeling isolated and lonely, like an alien from another planet set down into their midst; a freak everyone kept at arm’s length. They, on the other hand, remembered me as being popular and well-liked by everyone.

And that, my friends, is where this story came from. I still think about those tricks our memories play on us; our inability to see what was right in front of us if we could just see clearly.

The book will be officially released on April 7th from Untreed Reads; you can preorder it at any vendor that sells ebooks. There’s a stellar line-up of writers, and some of the proceeds are going to charity.

And thanks again to Josh Pachter for inviting me.

Here’s a link to Joni singing the song–this is the video I listened to for inspiration.

Nothing’s Gonna Stop Us Now

It’s going to take me a while to get used to getting off work early on Wednesdays. Yesterday as I left the office, I felt like I was skipping school or something, and I also had to catch myself periodically from thinking oh tomorrow’s Friday.

So today I have an eight hour shift ahead of me, and lots to do in the meantime. I made shrimp-n-grits last night, but rather than making the grits I made baked potatoes instead, sauteed some mushrooms, and used the shrimp-n-grits recipe to make the shrimp. Oh my God, was that ever delicious; the baked potatoes were the perfect starch to replace the grits.

I’ve simply got to get caught up on everything. The volunteer project continues to run on, but I am fairly certain today it will be finished–but I think I’ve been thinking that every morning since it started. It’s a long, detailed, immensely complicated process, but I do think that we are doing a good job on it–but details keep popping up that require changes, and like most things, when one thread gets pulled…other threads also start unraveling and you have to stanch the bleeding. But I think the work we did yesterday loans itself to being finished today, and at least I am heading into today with my fingers crossed that a good strong push today will get everything done, once and for all, which will be absolutely lovely sliding into the weekend, so I can get caught up on everything else. I am frankly so far behind on emails it’s not even funny, and I’ve barely written anything at all over the last few weeks. That essay is still due on Sunday and I still have that short story to whip into shape, but this has been so all-encompassing I haven’t been able to get anything else done in the meantime–when I call it quits for the day, I am too mentally exhausted to do much of anything else. Last night, for example, I finished the final season of the Scream television series; they’d done a third season that never aired on MTV but was instead released to Netflix. It wasn’t particularly good–entertaining enough, but the backstory that created the Ghostface character in this season didn’t really make sense, so the whole thing kind of unraveled at the end. It’s a shame; it had some very good moments, and it had a lot of potential.

So, I am hopeful that today the volunteer project will be finished, once and for all, and my life will return to some slight semblance of normalcy. I am far behind on writing goals with some deadlines looming that I should probably start panicking, but panicking is the worst thing I could do as it will bring with it that horrible paralysis which results in me never getting anything done. Which completely and totally sucks.

So, probably best not to go down that road, don’t you think?

Anyway, my friend Lisa from Atlanta will be in town this weekend, so I am going to go hang out with her when I get off work on Friday for a good little while. That’s good news, as I adore Lisa and she’s always a lot of fun to be around. I’m not even sure that LSU’s game will be on television this weekend–it’s a nobody game, I think Northwestern State, from Natchitoches (pronounced nakadish), so that frees up my Saturday almost completely. Sure, I’ll probably tune in to some other games that day, but most likely not. WHat I should do is spend the day writing, and then when I’ve burned out on that, curl up with Rob Hart’s The Warehouse. I hate that I’m getting so much further behind on my reading as well…and of course I wanted to finish the final draft of the Kansas book this month–but it’s already the twelfth and that means only eighteen more days to get it done. I probably could, with a strong push, but I don’t know. Scream did remind me, though, of some more horrible high school cliches I included in the Kansas book–the poor quarterback who wants to get a scholarship to get out of the dead-end town, the bitchy mean-girl cheerleader, and so forth. I think the primary problem I’ve had with this book all along is I never really learned who the characters were beneath their surface appearance; if I can do that (maybe I should focus on that this month, if I’m not going to be able to finish writing it this month at least maybe I can lay the groundwork for getting it finished in December) it will probably go a long way towards reclaiming the book and making it good rather than yet another cliche-ridden book filled with stereotypes. I was so concerned with the story itself, maybe I never really dug into the characters deeply enough.

Which is a recipe for disaster–and the book kind of is one at this point. I think I nailed the main character, but everyone else is simply a facade and a shell; so yeah, I should probably get that done. Always, always so much to do.

All right, I think I’m going to clean up the mess in the kitchen I left overnight from the shrimp ‘n’ baked potatoes from last night, and the get some work done this morning before I head into the office.

Have a lovely Thursday, Constant Reader.

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That’s What Friends Are For

So, yeah, yesterday. I get nearly as much done yesterday as I’d intended, despite my plans in the morning. I wound up getting sidetracked (the whole #cockygate thing was fascinating), I also started reading Lori Roy’s The Disappearing (not far into it, but already it’s fantastic–quelle surprise), and I also had dinner with a friend from high school whom I’d not seen in (gulp) forty years.

I don’t really mind, though. Beating myself up over not getting as much done as I wanted is kind of a waste of time. It’s not like it’s an outcome I can change, after all.

And why worry about things you can’t change?

It was fun seeing someone from high school again; a lot more fun than I thought it would be. The other day  I talked about how my life, or my memoir, would be divided up into decades, because it seemed like, in looking back, every new decade of my life almost coincided with a calendar decade and always signified change of some sort. I left Kansas in early 1981 for California, and I never returned. I’ve written about Kansas–not as much as I’ve written about New Orleans, of course; I’ve never written about anywhere as much as I’ve written about Kansas–and sometimes I think I should go back; but when I write about Kansas I make up the towns and the counties and the rural areas I write about, so I can write from my memory so if my memory turns out to be faulty, well, I made up the town. My fictional places are based on real places, but they are fictional.

The WIP, which I can never seem to find the time to get back to, is actually set in fictional Kansas. It’s been kicking around in my head for at least fifteen years, and the story has changed repeatedly over the years. I think I’ve got the right story now, and I really need to finish the Scotty so I can get back to it and finish the final, first person revision, which I think is the right way to go with this.

Anyway.

I don’t dwell on the past very often; but one of the nice things about seeing someone from high school is it kind of forces me to look back over the years. I mean, sometimes I do think about things, but it’s not something I spend a lot of time dwelling on; the past can’t be changed. But you can look back with a different perspective; with the wisdom that comes with the passing of time–or at least, a different perspective. I was desperately unhappy when I was younger; I also now know that my difficulty in focusing and inability to not have my mind wander would now warrant ADD medication. I spent a very long time of my life being unhappy; feeling like the life I wanted to live was something I would never be able to live. And yet I can honestly say I wouldn’t change any of the experiences I had, no matter how unhappy they may have made me at the time–because all of that made me the person that I am now, and I’m kind of happy with who I am now, and the life I have now. Sure, it would be terrific to have more success and more money; but I also think that would always be the case no matter how much success and how much money I might have.

It’s a weird world, it’s a weird life.

I’ve always been weird.  I never fit in anywhere. I didn’t fit in at either high school, I didn’t fit in at college or in my fraternity. I used to think my not fitting in was because of the gay thing; but then, like I said, I never really fit in with other gay men, either. I’m not sure what that’s about; maybe there’s some kind of social anxiety issue I have that hasn’t ever been diagnosed. But I am always uncomfortable at parties or in large gatherings, particularly when I walk into one alone and there’s no one there that I know; I’ve always envied gregarious, outgoing people who can walk up to total strangers and start a conversation. I am horrible at small talk; and live in deathly fear of saying something completely inappropriate to someone I’ve just met and giving offense; God knows someone I’ve only just met has certainly said offensive things to me before.

Ah, life.

And on that note, it’s back to the spice mines.

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