Tag: horror

Out of Season

Another Monday morning and it’s about time for me to head into the spice mines. I had a very restful and slightly less productive weekend than I would have liked, but isn’t that always the case? I feel good this morning and like it’s going to be a good week, with all kinds of things going on. Friends are coming into town this weekend, I have the Louisiana Book Festival this weekend, and we get an extra hour of sleep on Sunday morning for the last time, thank God. LSU has a bye week, but there are good games Saturday that I’m going to miss, alas. I have to get better organized, and that sounds like a very good plan for this week.

I read more of Mazywood yesterday and it really is most wonderful. Tananarive Due is a Queen, y’all, and you should be reading her–and other diverse writers, too–because one, she’s a fucking incredible writer, and two, we white people need to read more diversely in our choices. I know white people whine about reading outside their own experience, but don’t you want to grow as a person, understand the world a little better, all while having an incredibly enjoyable reading experience? And Mazywood is, above all else, an excellent read, with social commentary woven into the story….one I’m glad Due decided to take on.

It wasn’t a bad day yesterday, even if the Saints lost in Paris yesterday morning. It’s taken me a while to get used to the Saints losing all the time again–the Brees years did spoil us all, and the Saints’ return to previous form took a while to get used to once more. I always suspected the success was a temporary aberration in Saints history, but we have a Super Bowl win, which is more than some teams can say. I ordered groceries to be delivered, and after reading, I actually did some writing and editing, getting back on that horse and it wasn’t terrible. The chapter I need to redo didn’t really require much editorial revision, but I need to read it through again to make sure it flows properly–and I am also ready to move into the next chapter as well, which is progress. I have chores to do tonight that I blew off yesterday, and then I can settle in for the evening. We got caught up on AHS: 13, which is now completely off the rails and makes no sense…because the overarching connected universe of AHS doesn’t make sense either. What can I say? Expecting cohesion and clarity from a Ryan Murphy show is a fool’s game. We also started watching Below on Netflix with Josh Hartnett, who has aged like a fine Dom Perignon. It’s interesting, to say the least, and I am intrigued to get back to it.

Over the weekend, social media reminded me of an under-appreciated gem of a horror series that Paul and I both loved–Penny Dreadful, which was exceptional. Paul and I loved it, and maybe for Halloween Horror Month next year maybe I will revisit the show. Thinking about horror series always makes me think of one of my favorites, Friday the 13th–The Series, which was low-budget but a lot of fun with a great concept I’ve always wanted to borrow. I’ve been trying to find it on streaming for an eternity, and while it’s always been hard to find and never in its entirety, I came across a Hulu channel called Comet that shows two episodes every Sunday at eleven and twelve, so I’ve started recording them for a rewatch project; I also have a fan-written book about the show called Curious Goods that I’ve always wanted to get around to, and should have taken on this month. I forget there’s always horror nonfiction! Bad Greg, bad Greg. After all, Stephen King’s Danse Macabre was the first nonfiction book I read studying a genre in an accessible style.

And on that note, best head into the spice mines before I’m late–which would be a bad augur for the week. Have a great Monday, Constant Reader, and I will be back on the morrow.

Taste the rainbow…

Shoo Be Doo

Thursday and my last day in the office for the week. Tonight I am having dinner with a friend at Le Petit Grocery uptown, which is a marvelous place to eat, and how much do I love having a lovely meal with a good friend? I love it a lot, thank you for asking. I’m not completely agoraphobic, but I do prefer being home to being most places. Dad admitted when I was in Kentucky that he doesn’t have groceries delivered because it gets him out of the house…and I had to admit that not leaving the house ever sounds pretty amazing to me, which is probably not a good thing. I am solitary by nature (my lifelong dream has always been to live alone–Paul is probably the only person I could live with, and I do miss him when he’s gone, so that’s something, right?), and really, I never minded not being popular and I didn’t really miss it, either, other than having a sense that I was supposed to want those things. I would have been fine had I not been bullied, you know? That was what made school miserable for me–so why would I ever want to be around people in general? You can never go wrong never completely trusting straight people, harsh as that sounds, because they’ll almost always disappoint you1–and I’m not that trusting of gay white males, either. I have also found that standing with, and listening to (most) Black women will never steer you wrong2.

I also sent out a newsletter yesterday, about Riley Sager’s delightful The Only One Left, and you can click on the title there to read it, if you so desire. It’s really not horror–it’s a thriller, first and foremost–but as a Gothic, I feel like it can be considered “light horror,” at least. There are so many novels that straddle the line between crime and horror, and Gothic suspense definitely can go either way; Victoria Holt’s ghost monk in Kirkland Revels was absolutely terrifying and scary. I love that Gothic mood of tightly wound tension kept in check but keeps building until it explodes.

I don’t feel tired this morning, and I got out of bed at six promptly, having been already awake since five thirty. I was awake when Sparky jumped into the bed this morning, curling up at my feet to wait for the alarm. My joints don’t ache and my legs don’t feel tired, which is a big win, as it not being mentally tired. I clearly needed the time off, didn’t I? Tomorrow I have work at home chores to do, and some errands to run, but it should be a good day. I found another anthology I want to write a story for, and when talking about it with a friend3, he gave me an absolutely brilliant concept for the story, which I am kind of excited about writing, and now I have to come up with a working title, at the very least. I may even make it a Scotty Bradley story, if I can make it work that way. My first ever Scotty short story! I wrote a Chanse short story for the collection I did a few (probably more; I have no concept of times past) years ago, but no Scotty, ever. Maybe now that’s he’s older and not a bar slut anymore? I do want to get a lot of writing done this weekend, wish me luck. I started working on another short story for another anthology–well, finishing one that’s been moldering in the files for years, but fits a call I saw.

The Tiger Bowl (LSU-Auburn) is this weekend, and it’s always a mixed bag for me. I hate for either team to lose, so inevitably I just hope for a good game. Conference realignment killed the rivalry, since they now no longer play every year, which makes football season a little easier for me, but Auburn has rotated onto LSU’s schedule, and this year the game is at 11 in the morning and is at Jordan-Hare. I suspect when the time for the game to air was decided, no one dreamed both teams would be ranked and have the same record–or that Auburn would pull off the big upset at Georgia last weekend. I do like it–although it feels weird–when LSU is finished playing by three, because the rest of the games don’t really require watching; I usually watch games until the LSU game is over, and whatever is on after that isn’t as important to me to watch. I usually do–for example, was really glad to have watched BYU-Notre Dame last week4. I probably should check the TV schedule; I know Mississippi is at Texas (and damn them for making me root for Texas again), and I think both Missouri and Kentucky have a tough row to hoe. (Correction: Kentucky plays Vanderbilt, and Missouri has a bye.) I’ll probably have the Alabama-A&M game on while I do other things.

And on that note, I am going to head into the spice mines. Have a marvelous Thursday, and I will check in with you again tomorrow morning on Work-at-Home Friday. See you then!

This is the ad for Peachy Clean, a gummy that helps you clean out before being penetrated. I am simply amazed at how small his waist is.
  1. I cherish my straight friends. I cherish all of my actual friends, to be honest. I always make it sound like I don’t have any, which isn’t true. But it’s also true that I am not very social, and getting less so all the time. ↩︎
  2. Then there’s the Candace Owens types. We don’t talk about them. ↩︎
  3. See? I do have friends. ↩︎
  4. My family can’t be the only ones who watch Notre Dame games hoping to see them lose, can we? ↩︎

Every One’s a Winner

Congratulations one and all!!!

The Macavity Awards 2026
(for works published in 2025)
The Macavity Awards are nominated and voted on by members of Mystery Readers International, subscribers to Mystery Readers Journal, and friends of MRI. Congratulations to all.

Want to be a member/subscriber, go here. Mystery Readers Journal themes for 2026: Fairs, Fetes, and Festivals; Mysteries set in France; Cross-Genre Mysteries; and Mysteries set in India.

Macavity Winners 2026 (for works published in 2025)

Best Mystery Novel

*Crooks by Lou Berney (William Morrow)

Also nominated:

King of Ashes by S.A. Cosby (Flatiron Books)

Clown Town by Mick Herron (Soho Crime)

River of Lies by James L’Etoile (Oceanview Publishing)

The White Crow by Michael Robotham (Scribner)

All This Could Be Yours by Hank Phillippi Ryan (Minotaur Books)

Best First Mystery

*History Lessons by Zoe B. Wallbrook (Soho Press)

Also nominated:

Savvy Summers and the Sweet Potato Crimes by Sandra Jackson-Opoku (Minotaur Books)

Dead Money by Jakob Kerr (Bantam Books)

Voices of the Elysian Fields by Michael Rigg (Level Best Books)

Stillwater by Tanya Scott (Grove Atlantic)

Best Mystery Nonfiction

*Vacations Can Be Murder: A True Crime Lover’s Travel Guide to New England by Dawn M. Barclay (Level Best Books)

Also nominated:

Blood and the Badge: The Mafia, Two Killer Cops, and a Scandal That Shocked the Nation by Michael Cannell (Minotaur Books)

Murderland: Crime and Bloodlust in the Time of Serial Killers by Caroline Fraser (Penguin Press)

V Is for Venom: Agatha Christie’s Chemicals of Death by Kathryn Harkup (Bloomsbury Sigma)

Edgar Allan Poe: A Life by Richard Kopley (University of Virginia Press)

Cooler than Cool: The Life and Work of Elmore Leonard by C.M. Kushins (Mariner Books)

Best Mystery Short Story

*“Six-Armed Robbery” by Ashley-Ruth M. Bernier (in Donna Andrews Presents Malice Domestic: Mystery Most Humorous, edited by John Betancourt, Carla Coupe, and Michael Bracken, Wildside Press)

Also nominated:

“Hollywood Prometheus” by Christa Faust (in Crime Ink: Iconic: An Anthology of Crime Fiction Inspired by Queer Icons, edited by John Copenhaver and Salem West, Bywater Books)

“Finding Jimmy Baldwin” by Cheryl Head (in Crime Ink: Iconic: An Anthology of Crime Fiction Inspired by Queer Icons, edited by John Copenhaver and Salem West, Bywater Books)

“The Devil Himself” by Vaseem Khan (in Double Crossing Van Dine, edited by Donna Andrews, Greg Herren, and Art Taylor, Crippen & Landru Publishers)

“The Skies Are Red” by Richie Narvaez (in On Fire and Under Water: A Climate Change Crime Fiction Anthology, edited by Curtis Ippolito, Rock and a Hard Place Press)

“Julius Katz Draws a Straight Flush” by Dave Zeltserman (Alfred Hitchcock Mystery Magazine, Sept/Oct 2025)

Sue Feder Memorial Historical Mystery

*Bye Bye Blackbird by Elizabeth Crowens (Level Best Books)

Also nominated:

A Daughter’s Guide to Mothers and Murder by Dianne Freeman (Kensington Books)

City Lights by Claire M. Johnson (Level Best Books)

The Case of the Christie Conspiracy by Kelly Oliver (Boldwood Books)

The Case of the Missing Maid by Rob Osler (Kensington Books)

No. 10 Doyers Street by Radha Vatsal (Level Best Books)

Runaway Lover

Thursday and it’s not my last day in the office for the week; I have a department meeting tomorrow that I need to come in for. I may stay for a few hours after and do some work here, but on the other hand I may just get back in the car and head home. I guess we’ll see how I feel, but it would be incredibly convenient to get all my errands out of the way. We’re supposed to start getting rain from Polo tomorrow, and continue with flooding rains all weekend…so I am not going to want to leave the house that often. I do have to go get my vaccines Saturday morning–I figured if they make me woozy again like they always do, it’s better to be home. LSU’s game is against McNeese State Saturday night–their fifth night game in a row–and I think a lot of the other games this season will be at night again. All the media alarm bells after the Mississippi loss subsided with the trouncing of Texas A&M last week, but…the remaining schedule remains brutal.

Well, Sparky closed my browser for me (thanks, babe!) and I lost three paragraphs of this entry which I will now try to reconstruct. Sigh.

I was tired when I got home from work yesterday, Sparky was needy, and I just needed to sit for a minute last night before doing anything, but I got sucked into the news–both national and football–and several wormholes (is it just me, but are Youtube videos becoming more and more AI-generated?) opened up for me before I switched over to this HBO documentary series about Warner Brothers–and old Hollywood stuff always works as research for the book. I went to bed shortly after that, and didn’t do a damned bit of chores at all. The apartment is still pretty well kept-up, but there’s some cosmetic cleaning that needs doing, the dishwasher needs to be unloaded and reloaded again, and there’s another load of laundry that needs doing, too. I’ll have to take care of some of that tonight so this weekend I can primarily focus on writing and deeper cleaning issues (baseboards, etc.). The house is also currently being painted, so much as I would like to go outside in this cooler clime to clean the windows…probably not going to happen until the house is finished being painted. (I have to negotiate an obstacle course most days when I get home to get into the house.)

Today is also the first day of Halloween Horror Month, in which I try to make sure all my reading and streaming needs are horror-related. I know I am going to revisit Halloween and A Nightmare on Elm Street–always excellent choices–and it’s always fun to dip into horror, which I need to read more of. I am going to listen to Shadowland by Peter Straub on my trip next Friday to Alabama/Kentucky–can you believe it’s next week already? I can’t–and will take some other horror along to read while I am up there. I am going to start reading The House That Horror Built, and I think on the way home i may listen to a Grady Hendrix novel.

I also need to get back to writing, either on short stories or on the book. I’ve been focusing a lot on writing nonfiction–the newsletters–and while I have really been enjoying doing that (and my writing is improving, which is always a delightful thing), I need to get back on the fiction horse. I’ve kind of been letting my creativity recharge, after finishing that story last weekend, but I definitely need to be climbing back into the saddle again. Maybe tomorrow, during the rains. We’re supposed to get up to five inches over the next few days–but we shouldn’t have any flooding concerns if the rain is spread out. Five inches in two hours or less and the city is underwater.

And on that note, methinks I shall head into the spice mines. Hope you have a lovely Friday Eve, Constant Reader, and I will be back tomorrow morning before my meeting. See you then!

My God, Alan Ritchson is just ridiculously handsome.

Inside of Me

Sunday morning! I got up earlier than I thought I would this morning, given how late I went to bed last night because the LSU had about a two hour rain delay and didn’t get started until almost nine. I didn’t see that as a good omen, honestly, but…yeah, more on that a little later.

It rained off and on pretty much all day yesterday, which was nice. I felt good, if a bit on the low energy side, but it was fine. I had some groceries delivered, managed to get a lot of chores done, worked on straightening up the books, washed the bathroom rugs, and did two (!!) loads of dishes. Sparky was also cuddly and wanted to sleep on me most of the day since Paul wasn’t home; he worked out with his trainer and then went to the gym to do cardio for a couple of hours. I worked on the computer files some, cleaned off the kitchen counters, and organized the refrigerator. I should have been more tired, shouldn’t I? *snicker* In the morning, after I posted my blog and a new newsletter (which you can read by clicking here!) I went into the living room for cuddle time with Sparky. I finished watching The Burbs, and watched this week’s Real Housewives of Orange County (yawn) before putting it on to the Alabama game, which I didn’t need to pay attention to, and then had the Baylor-Auburn game on. It’s still too early in the season to know how good anyone is yet, so we don’t know what the seasons holds for anyone–I mean, Michigan almost lost at home to Western Michigan yesterday–which makes it all the more interesting to watch while dismissing “expert” opinions on who is or isn’t good.. It’s nice not being so emotionally vested in college football anymore (a topic for another time), to be honest, and dialing back my fandom in my dotage isn’t something I saw coming, but…it’s probably better this way. That emotional roller coaster I used to ride during LSU games was exhausting and unnecessary.

The Auburn-Baylor game turned out to be a lot better than I expected; wasn’t sure what to expect from either (I do like Baylor coach Dave Aranda, he was our defensive coordinator in 2019) and Auburn has a new coach this year. Can the new coach turn Auburn around and get them winning again? Auburn made a goal-line stand on a two-point conversion in the final seconds of the game to win, 17-16. Good for you, new coach! While it wasn’t an impressive outing for Auburn, they lost the close games most of the time in the last five or six years.

The LSU-Clemson game was weather delayed, as I already mentioned; we were also having a thunderstorm here. I managed to cookout between waves of the storm, and after watching the US Open during the delay, finally settled in to watch the game. Oh. My. God. As I said yesterday and reiterated above, it’s hard at this point in the season to tell who’s good and who isn’t. So, yes, it’s entirely possible that Clemson is really bad this year–but LSU beat them 51-10, and it wasn’t even that close. I’ve not seen LSU beat a top tier college team that badly in–well, since the Oklahoma game in the play-offs with Joe Burrow. The defense was incredible. It was also Dabo Swinney’s worst loss in his time at Clemson–maybe as a head coach in general. Sam Leavitt and that new running back Dilin Jones certainly looked amazing. Even the back-ups, going in late in the third quarter, looked really good. I had hoped for a big win, like I always do, but 51-10? Never in my wildest dreams would I have anticipated that. This is going to be a very interesting season, but Coach Kiffin sure seemed to be having a really good time last night, and Death Valley was rocking. I am trying not to get too excited, choosing to keep my “cautiously optimistic” hat on for now, just as I did with the 2019 team.

I also loved the signs at Gameday (I didn’t watch; because Macafee) that I saw on-line later: You can’t spell lawsuit without LSU and Don’t sue me Jayden I’m only 5.

I started rereading Celebrity by Thomas Thompson; it’s a rather long and deeply involving crime story that takes place over the course of over twenty years. It’s always been one of my favorites (Thompson wrote one of my favorite true crime “novels,” Blood and Money) and a friend mentioned it recently on social media, so I got it down from the shelves (I have my original copy still, hardcover) and started looking at it again last weekend, rereading the opening. Does it still hold up? No crime novel would ever get away with being this long now–it would have to be marketed as something else; I don’t know what it was considered or marketed as on its original release. I bought it because I’d loved his earlier true crime writing, and this intrigued me. I’ve always loved stories that go back and forth in time, with the reader not knowing much about what’s going on in the present. The book opens from the point of view of a cop at the hospital with someone having emergency surgery; all we know is someone has been arrested, someone is dead, and someone could die, but not who they are and how we got to the point, which is an excellent way to open a book, if you ask me, It’s not until we go back in time that we learn who the three central characters are, and we meet them as high school seniors whose graduation party plans have been rained out by a flooding rain…it’s also quite well-written, but I also wonder if anyone would publish it today. It’s going to make for a good essay, methinks.

I got an email yesterday with the subject line Six Gothic thrillers for fans of horror. Excuse me, what? It was one of those lists of books things, but…Gothic isn’t always horror, and horror isn’t always Gothic. Rebecca, for example, is a Gothic novel that isn’t horror. It really annoyed me–Gothic can be any number of other subgenres, but…I will have to concede that Gothic thrillers may appeal to horror fans. As someone who is a fan of horror and Gothics, I used to make that same mistake–but classifying books is not an exact science in the first place.

I also read a Richard Matheson short story yesterday. Matheson is one of my favorite writers; it’s amazing how many films and episodes of television shows (like The Twilight Zone) are based on his work, and I never think to include him (and Robert Bloch) as authors who have influenced me. I should revisit some of this novels…anyway, the story was a Western called “The Conqueror.” It’s actually very poignant, about a young man who has come west to prove himself as a quick draw duelist. It doesn’t end well, and is kind of sad; someone who, in 1871, wanted his fifteen minutes of fame. It also reminded me again what a master Matheson was.

I saw an anthology submissions call for crimes without corpses; in other words, any crime but murder. I don’t think I’ve ever written a non-murder crime story, which is kind of wild. Why do I always only think of murder when it comes to crime? Something to ponder at any rate.

And on that note, I am heading into the spice mines. I am playing today by ear; whether I read or write or clean or any combination of the above will remain to be seen predicated on what I am feeling like. I feel a bit lazy today–staying up so late but still getting up early is not recommended–so today is what it is. So have yourself a merry little holiday Sunday, Constant Reader, and I will be back again tomorrow morning! Till then, stay cool.

These kinds of staircases always make me think o The Haunting of Hill House. I would never climb one, but they are pretty to look at.

Physical Attraction

Sunday morning and Sparky let me sleep later this morning than he did yesterday, but I think I might have been better off going back to bed yesterday morning instead of staying up. I felt worn out and exhausted all day, with little to no motivation to do much of anything. I didn’t write any fiction yesterday, but I did get my latest newsletter, about the Rick Brant science mysteries and loving Egypt, out, so that’s an accomplishment, right? I also read some–read several chapters of Love in the Afternoon and Evening, and a couple of chapters of The Last House on Needless Street, which is a pleasure to read–and watched some news and some World War II short documentaries on Youtube (I got sucked into one on Midway, and then I was down the wormhole: Stalingrad, Battle of the Bulge, Normandy, and so forth). I needed a down day, methinks, because I feel really good this morning. Listen to your body, Gregalicious, which you most definitely did NOT do yesterday morning. I also didn’t do much organizing or cleaning or anything, either. Like I said, I was just low energy most of the day.

Which I guess I needed to be.

We also started The Vampire Lestat, and my God, is it wonderful. I already enjoyed Sam Reid as Lestat from Louis’ point of view in Interview with the Vampire, but my God, does he ever embody Anne Rice’s Brat Prince to perfection in this. Visually and stylistically it’s impressive and over the top and everything Mrs. Rice could have ever wanted for her characters. The story is compelling, driven so strongly by Sam Reid’s Lestat that I didn’t have the same reaction I initially did when reading the books–switching to Lestat’s point of view was jarring; my mentality was “the entire first book was about how much of an asshole he is, and now you’re making him the hero of the series?” But I kept reading the series–I never read any of the new books after she returned to the characters after a few years of a break, and maybe someday I will, like when I have a lengthy vacation where I can just read–like Acapulco. But we’re loving this season, and I am delighted that next season will be The Queen of the Damned, which was what turned her into an international best seller. I joined the series when there were just the three, and I read them all on a trip to Honolulu before the fourth came out–which was one of my favorites of the series. (I have to say, though, that my favorite Rice novel, The Witching Hour, was extremely disappointing as a series.)

We were going to go see Spider-Man today, but when I checked the theaters, there weren’t many seats left, and I told Paul last night that I didn’t think I’d be up to being around a lot of strangers today–the lobby will be packed as well as the cinema itself–and we decided to wait until next weekend, or my birthday, which is two weeks from Thursday, I think, when I turn sixty-five. That was quite the run-on sentence, wasn’t it? We are going to have to go out today–theory is that it’s supposed to be cooler today after the rain passes, and it looks like it has…at least for now, anyway. I think I may even go read for a bit once I post this, and should read until the rain is completely past, which, per the local news, will be around noon–there was just now a bit of thunder in the distance, so that’s probably on its way here now. I honestly don’t know what kind of day I am going to have, so I am not going to hope for any outcomes and see how the cards fall for the day. (We need to go pick up Paul’s new glasses at Costco, which is really where I should get my new ones…hmmm.)

And on that note, I am going to get something to eat and will head into the living room for a bit to do some reading. So, have a great day, my friends, and I’ll be back in the morning.

How old is this picture? I wouldn’t have thought anything about it until I noticed his computer looks like an iMac from around the turn of the century. Maybe he is into antiques?

Long Way To Go

I slept in a little this morning, until His Majesty King Sparky, Lord of the Lost Apartment, had enough of waiting for his meal and got me up. I feel rested–it really is amazing what a difference waking up naturally (rather than to an alarm) makes. I have to brave the cold today and run some errands, but I intend to get back home and inside as quickly as possible. This morning feels like a read in my chair morning with a blanket draped over me before getting cleaned up and running errands while slurping coffee, which absolutely sounds marvelous. I want to get some writing done today. I had an idea for a short story yesterday for a call for submissions I really would love to do something for, and I would like to get some of that done today or tomorrow. I was also thinking about other stories, and Chlorine, while I worked on the apartment, and also made some notes, which was pretty cool.

Yesterday was a lovely day around here–not so much in the outside world, as ever and always, more on that horror later on–in which I got up, got cleaned up, did my day job duties, and started cleaning and organizing the apartment. I got all the laundry done, a start on the books again, and started organizing the laundry room/pantry shelves. I tried reattaching the exhaust hose to the dryer vent numerous times, but it kept coming loose again, turning the room into a sauna briefly. This is going to call for drastic measures, methinks, like Gorilla tape or something similar. But the shelves in the pantry are starting to look neater and more organized, which is always a plus, you know? And very pleasing to look at, you know? I do still like neatness, organization, and tidiness.

I had the news on while I cleaned and organized and occasionally sat down for a break. I greatly enjoyed all the news about the Bezos bribe documentary, Melania, which might be worth streaming for free for the unintentionally funny parts. (Paul does the best imitation of her opening line from the shitty trailer, here we go again, that is so eerily spot on it creeps me out while making me laugh at the same time.) I doubt that it will become a cult classic for midnight viewing, like Showgirls or The Rocky Horror Picture Show, but you know it’s laughably bad. The review in The Guardian was hilariously brutal; I’ve bookmarked it to go back and read it again whenever I feel down and need a cruel laugh to cheer me back up, and who better to laugh at than the soulless Slovenian concubine? The latest Epstein files drop was particularly horrifying (I don’t think most of us have the creatively evil kind of imagination to even consider how horrible all of it actually is–but all you have to do is look at what this vile regime is doing to simply distract us from it to know that its filled with unimaginable horrors. I’ve always said killing the kids was all a part of it, and that was just scratching the surface; the start of the unspeakably vile horrors on that island and various other places. I mean, they arrested a journalist, kidnapped a head of state, killed Americans and Venezuelans, and bombed Iran (unsuccessfully). It’s big, its huge, and the national security of any number of countries are also involved–and we would see behind the curtains at last to see how the wealthy elites have been enriching themselves at our expense in order to do this kind of shit.

The guillotine is too merciful for these pricks. And I hope Don Lemon sues the fuck out of all of them for violating his civil rights, wrongful arrest, targeted prosecution, and abuse of fucking power.

God, how I hate them all.

I have been thinking about my next short story collection, This Town and Other Stories, and finally got the notebook down with the manuscript and notes to take a look and see what I have for it, and what else would need to be finished to finish the collection, and was very pleased to see that I’ve published and sold enough stories since the last time I thought about it that I do have an entire collection of published stories, and won’t need to do write any new ones for it, except as perhaps a bonus for the readers? But we shall see, won’t we?

And on that note, I am heading into the spice mines.

Ole Smokey, the Orpheus train float, is one of my favorites.

enchanted

And here we are on another work-at-home Friday, after an odd week. Monday was a holiday, and of course I took Wednesday off, so this has been an odd week. I kept thinking yesterday was Monday, for one thing, which was weird–I felt rested and motivated for most of the day, which was a good thing. I was also very efficient, getting everything done that needed to be done, and of course, I have work at home duties to get done. I slept well again and got up earlier than usual, so I feel good this morning, too. Might I actually get some things done this weekend? Remains to be seen. There’s a cold front coming in over the weekend, with temperatures dipping down into the freezing range on Sunday. We’re not supposed to get snow and ice, but….one never can be certain, can one? I did get some chores done last night, too, so I am already ahead on the weekend. All the dishes are clean, so all I need to work on is pruning the books some more and the floors. Huzzah! I should have time to get some writing done as well as some other cleaning and organizing, and reading, too. Well, we’ll see, at any rate; I reserve the right to be lazy this weekend.

I get all sorts of emails trying to sell me ebooks on sale for either $1.99 or $2.99, and usually I’ll get things that I’ve already read, or something I meant to read all along yet never obtained a copy. Yesterday, the ebook I impulsively bought was Thus Was Adonis Murdered by Sarah Caudwell.1 I have a mass market paperback copy I bought any number of years ago, and I cannot remember who recommended it to me, or why they did; but I now have it in physical and ethereal form, so maybe I’ll get around to reading it this year. Maybe I’ll get around to reading something, anything, this year.

I was delighted to see Sinners get so many Oscar nominations, setting a new record for most with 16. I personally loved the movie, thought it was incredibly well made, written, and acted, and am really happy the Academy seems to be getting past its issues with horror cinema (Frankenstein also got a lot of nominations, and I still want to see it). Maybe this weekend I can carve out some time for a rewatch of Sinners, as well as Frankenstein and my rewatch of The Mummy.2 I always have so much to do, and being overwhelmed by it and getting none of it done is a long-standing issue in my life. I think I am nervous about working on Chlorine, and that is effectively blocking me from getting other things done along the way, too. Obviously, the answer to that dilemma is idiot, so start working on it–it can always be fixed. I don’t know why I can’t get past the fear of writing stuff I may not be able to use, but here we are, you know?

I still haven’t watched the final season of Stranger Things, and honestly, can’t drum up much interest in my mind to even consider watching. I don’t remember much, if anything, of the previous season…which is probably part of the problem. We also lost interest in Welcome to Derry, too. I think watching Derry and not getting into it has something to do with my lack of interest in finishing Stranger Things. The show started out as an homage to Stephen King and the 1980s, which made it a lot of fun for me those first few seasons…but if anything, It was kind of the blueprint for Stranger Things, and as a fan of It, there was a lot of issues in my mind with continuing with Derry–and having started Derry, I think the similarities is the mind block for me.

I got my twenty-one year pin this week at work, which was yet another damn you’re old moment for me. I’ve worked there now for nearly a third of my life (my previous record for a job was five years) and a lot has changed since I went to work part-time at the CAN office of the NO/AIDS Task Force twenty-one years ago–not just for me and the world, but in HIV testing, treatment, and care. Twenty-one years ago we hadn’t reached the ability to achieve undetectable viral loads (making you non-infectious) and PrEP (to prohibit new infections).

And on that note, I am heading into the spice mines. Have a lovely Friday, Constant Reader, and I will check back in with you again tomorrow morning. Till then, arrivederci!

Screenshot
  1. And yes, it bothers me that I cannot remember why it was recommended to me. I guess it doesn’t matter. ↩︎
  2. I love the Brendan Fraser/Rachel Weisz movies so much–but I can’t remember which movie is which! It will be part of my newsletter’s Egypt series. ↩︎

Season of the Witch

Happy All Saints Day! And welcome to November, I suppose. This year is slipping away like sands through the hour glass (hat tip: Days of Our Lives), but the terrorist attack of New Year’s seems like it was a million years ago, too. When I think about where we are now as opposed to where we were ten months ago, though…it seems like a decade has passed since my New Year’s blog, doesn’t it? I slept deeply and well last night, and Sparky let me sleep later (although he got his razor blades trimmed yesterday, so him smacking me in the face in the morning doesn’t have the same impact) than I usually do, so that was nice too. We have to run some errands today we didn’t get to yesterday, but that’s fine. LSU isn’t playing today so I don’t have a vested interest in watching games today, so I don’t really care to be home for them all day, either. I probably won’t get any writing or much reading done, but…I also am not going to worry about it. Yes, time is slipping away, but I also need to allow myself to get rest and be lazy without beating myself up about it all the damned time, too. Progress?

Perhaps. We shall see.

I also have to pay some bills this morning before we do anything, and probably get some of the chores done, too. I made good progress on chores yesterday; the bed linens all got laundered, the dishes are done and put away, the counters are cleaned and cleared, and all I really need to do is vacuum the rugs and mop the floors, and potentially prune more of the books down. I need to be more ruthless, too.

The backlash to governor Janky Jeff’s massive interference with LSU apparently taught the moron some sort of lesson, because he backed the fuck down after Scott Woodward (best of luck to you, sir, you worked wonders at LSU and I am sorry Janky Jeff decided to show his ass) was fired. To paraphrase Mean Girls, “he didn’t even go there.” He also got some pushback when he tried to force Loyola (a Jesuit Catholic private university in New Orleans) to charter a chapter of Turning Point USA after the student senate flatly rejected their application, mainly because they don’t share the same values as the Society of Jesus. Bitch slap! I was glad to see a Catholic university stand their ground against political interference from TEMU Huey Long. Don’t stand with the evangelicals, Catholics–they will come for you eventually as idolators and papists and pagans. They don’t think you’re real Christians in the first place, so less than what they see as “white.” Janky Jeff is not popular in Louisiana; only 19% of registered voters even voted in that gubernatorial election because we had no options. All the candidates were different degrees of MAGA, anyway. I don’t even remember who I voted for, but I have never cast a ballot for Jeff Landry and I never will.

I can only hope to be seated in the jury for his inevitable trial for corruption and malfeasance. No, they wouldn’t seat me, because no one could ever convince me he isn’t guilty.

Then again, Jindal was never charged with anything. And he definitely should have been; his wife was just as corrupt as Casey DeSantis, and the corrupt always corrupt. (Note to everyone: their women are just as bad as, if not worse, than their husbands. See: Usha Vance, Melania Trump, Lara Trump…the list is lengthy.)

Sigh.

My mind is still deeply entrenched in horror, by the way, which is something I don’t remember Halloween Horror Month doing to me before; maybe because I was always trying to finish a book before the end of the year? This entire decade has been mentally draining and fatiguing, frankly, and I’ve had a lot of brain fog and increasing loss of memory. I do wonder occasionally about how different my career would be had I gone into horror rather than crime; rather than just being a fan. I did want to write horror when I was in my twenties, and even tried. I laugh now when I remember thinking my personalized rejections with suggestions and tips and encouragement to keep writing and submitting to them, from horror magazine editors, was just them being nice. Editors are never nice like that, ever, as I have since learned. I guess I was so down on myself and had such a lack of self-esteem (as well as knowledge; there was no one to tell me differently) that I focused on the rejection rather than accepting the encouragement. Each rejection was further confirmation that I was a loser, and I was in such a spiral of misery in the 1980s there wasn’t any way I could have seriously pursued being a writer. I don’t have regrets–I never do–but sometimes I do wonder. I played the cards I was dealt and everything eventually turned out, didn’t it? But I am going to try to work on some things tomorrow, since I don’t have to leave the house at all and Paul is, I think, going to his office.

And on that note, I am heading into the spice mines. Have a lovely Saturday, Constant Reader, and I’ll be back here in the morning.

Every Day is Halloween

Happy Halloween!

A hungry kitty has me up before dawn on this eve of All Hallows, and he is definitely needing more attention as I sit here swilling coffee; he keeps attacking me wanting to play, and doesn’t understand how sharp his Freddie Krueger claws are. I have work to do today, and lots of errands as well. Sparky needs to go to the vet for his annual shots and check-up (and his nails trimmed; we really need to learn how to do this ourselves, as it would stop a lot of bloodshed around here), and Paul needs to get his new phone set up. There’s also mail and some groceries and some other odds and ends to do either today or tomorrow. I feel very rested this morning, which is nice–and a good head start on the weekend, frankly; usually it takes me till Sunday to feel rested and not tired anymore.

I’m enjoying this fall weather (probably won’t take long for me to be over it, though) so far; but it’s nice not to be drenched in sweat as soon as I go outside the front door, or to have my car be as hot as the Sahara after sitting in the sun all day. The heat can be so draining and exhausting; just thinking about next summer makes me shudder a little bit inside. But the weather is another cost of living in New Orleans, that we all willingly pay (along with those nightmarish summer Entergy bills) while wondering how people survived here before electricity and climate control. Back when everyone wore a ridiculous amount of clothing and no electricity, how did they smell? (I often think about how rank the city must have been back in the day, when the gutters were deep for waste and water run off, in all that heat and humidity…yikes, indeed. I can’t get past that whenever I start thinking about writing about the past here…)

I also have thoughts about our janky governor turning himself into a mini-Mussolini, like the MAGA piece of shit he is, but I’ll save that for football Saturday since it’s LSU-related. Suffice it to say, he’s started down a path that could prove consequential for the state’s biggest priority–LSU sports–which would be received here in the state about as well as the worst of Jindal’s crimes as governor. On the other hand, if this winds up making him politically radioactive, it may be worth it. The funniest thing about it is he didn’t even go to LSU. Janky Jeff went to ULL and Loyola here in New Orleans–the same Loyola that rejected Turning Point’s request to be a recognized club. Jesuits aren’t having your MAGA bullshit, Janky Jeff! He also wants to put up a Charlie Kirk statue on LSU’s campus. Make sure you walk all the potential football recruits past that statue, and how is Charlie Kirk1 getting a statue on campus before Joe Burrow or Jayden Daniels? Janky Jeff’s priorities aren’t in the best interests of the flagship university…

I didn’t do a whole lot when I got home from work other than cuddle with Sparky and catch up on the news. I did work on the chores some; I need to do more of that this morning before taking Sparky to the vet; the apartment has looked worse before on Friday mornings, and there’s lots of filing to get done. I also want to finish my final Halloween Horror Month newsletter, since today is the last day for that, but I may just get that done over the weekend. I’ve already made this weekend inclusive for the Halloween weekend, so I don’t even need to rationalize anything! Win-win.

And on that note, I am going to get cleaned up and get to work. Have a lovely Halloween, everyone!

Bad Bunny!
  1. And why not put up statues of Rush Limbaugh and David Duke while you are at it, Janky? ↩︎