Tag: House of the Dragon

Downtown

Sunday morning has rolled around again, and I am feeling pretty good. I slept well again before Sparky decided it was time for me to get up, and he let me sleep later (after he started) without much of a quibble. (I like to pretend he cuddles with me in the mornings before I get up because it’s nice; I know it’s because he wants to know the minute I get up so he can start meowing at me to come downstairs with him.) The closing ceremonies for the Olympics are today, which is a shame, as I always love the Olympics. There really is nothing more patriotic-feeling like rooting for young athletic Americans on the wolrd stage, is there? The fact that this was going on while the tides of our election have seemingly all turned to the positive has really been something. I’ve been thinking a lot lately about what patriotism is and what it means to be patriotic–and not in the least little bit because the Right has made patriotism so distasteful and embarrassing. I am seeing the crowds at the Vice-President’s rallies moving to take patriotism back from the Christian Nationalists (the flag, the USA chant, etc.) because what they call patriotism is actually anything but. But the Democratic National Convention is going to be pretty thrilling this year, methinks, reminiscent of another dark period coming to an end–the 2008 election ending the nightmare of the eight years of right-wing control and endless wars and lies. I know I am actually excited about the election now, and while the fear and dread are still there, there’s a lot of joy and optimism.

And what an amazing Olympiad this has been, the haters and agents of darkness aside1! so many great stories, so many redemptions, and so much fun to watch and enjoy as always. It also felt different; maybe the fucked up 2020 Tokyo Olympics caused a reset; it didn’t feel like an Olympics and now, all I did was (besides root for our athletes) be happy for the all the competitors and medalists–I finally developed the proper Olympic spirit that doesn’t villainize great athletes from other countries. I never liked that whole xenophobic need for the US to win the most medals to prove our superiority as a nation; I do not want to be anything like the Nat C’s. Probably twenty years ago I might have hated, for example, Rebeca Andrade as Simone’s biggest competition–but this time around I simply enjoyed her skills and abilities and applauded for her just as I did for our gymnasts. I think I have finally unpacked and emptied the last of my conditioning as an American.2

I had a lovely relaxing day yesterday. Paul and I watched Challengers, which was interesting, and then caught up on House of the Dragon, The Serpent Queen, and started watching the second season of the show with Rob Lowe and his son on Netflix, which is cute and funny. I can’t think of the name of the show, but the first season was pretty pleasant and fun, so I hope the second season isn’t a disappointment. Watching these shows about royals struggling over the throne and power put me to thinking, again, about actual history, and of course the Catherine de Medici story, which I’ve always enjoyed. The banker’s daughter who became queen of France and mother herself of three kings and two queens. The show jumped from actual history to nonsense toward the end of the first season, and this second season is diverging dramatically from what actually happened; Queen Elizabeth never visited the French court, nor did Holy Roman Emperor Charles V (who actually abdicated and died before Catherine’s husband, Henri II) and likewise, his son Philip II did actually marry Elisabeth de Valois, but it was at her wedding celebration that Henri was killed. And they are starting to set up her daughter Margot’s story, which is also endlessly interesting to me. I’m still reading Rival Queens, the story of the mother-daughter relationship during one of the most treacherous periods of French history. I was also thinking about how people always say George R. R. Martin based A Song of Fire and Ice on the Wars of the Roses; but there’s another series of French histories called The Accursed Kings by Maurice Druon, focusing on the years 1310-1337, about the end of the main branch of the Capetian dynasty and the rise of the Valois branch–and the Hundred Years’ War. This aspect of French history–the lead up to that epic war–isn’t as well known, and I tore through that series when I discovered it at the Emporia Library as a teenager. It’s a great series, a fascinating time in French history (there are many fascinating periods in French history), and you can probably see why I love French history (and France) so much.

I’ve also been thinking, not only about the book I’m writing now but the next Scotty, too. I’ve renamed it Hurricane Season Hustle (saying party instead of season seems like asking for it, frankly), and started coming up with ideas for the plot. I have also been thinking about my short stories in progress, and I think I’ve come up with any number of ways to fix the ones I want to get fixed. My goal is to finish the short story collection this month and get it out of the way while working on the new book. Football season will be here before you know it, which will start taking up my weekends, so I need to be starting to get back to the grind of everything. I did do some cleaning yesterday around the house, too, and plan to do some more this morning before I go make groceries at Rouse’s. I can’t decide if I want to make steak fajitas for dinner, or pepper steak.

I did read a short story yesterday, “The Amateur of Crime,” by Stephen Vincent Benet. It’s an old story, Benet is a famous writer not known for his crime stories, and it was interesting, if a bit…I don’t know, unrealistic? I have found that non-crime writers who write crime short stories for whatever reason always seem to go for the “huh?” solution to crimes. In this case, the amateur detective on the spot is helped by any number of coincidences that also happen to give him the knowledge to solve the crime (there was a Faulkner crime short story that’s solution had to do with cigarette smoke trapped beneath a radiator…again, not realistic), which seemed contrived to me. But it was an interesting story, and again, reading it gave me some ideas how to fix some of my own in-progress drafts, or the ones that are finished but need revision.

There’s always so much writing to do.

And on that note, I am going to head into the spice mines for the day. I do need to make a grocery list before running over to Rouse’s today; nothing major, a little run to get stuff for lunch and to make dinner a few nights this week. But for now, I am going to get cleaned up and do some filing and so forth, so I bid you adieu for now, Constant Reader, and I hope you have a marvelous Sunday.

  1. Hilariously, a while back when I did one of my Pride posts about how white women have always been the worst homophobes, a friend asked me why I didn’t mention the Chatelaine of Castle TERF, and I replied “she gets her own.’ But she is so evil and awful and horrible so regularly that before I can finish writing about her, she’ll do something even worse. Her behavior during these Olympics, along with the haters she’s embraced, was especially egregious and awful. ↩︎
  2. I sometime want to write about this, and the American mythology I was raised to believe that wasn’t the truth but something taught to justify white supremacy. ↩︎

Last Train to Clarksville

Well, we made it to Wednesday, didn’t we? This is my first full week of work in over three weeks, thanks to holidays and a canceled trip, and I am rather surprised at how well I am doing. Monday was a drag, but yesterday? I was wide awake and energized when I left the house yesterday morning, and listened to Berlin’s Pleasure Victim–which is still a bop, forty years (!) later–and got to work early. I also got to leave early, which was delightful, despite the remnants of Beryl dumping rain on us off and on all day.

The concept of the art vs the artist has reared its ugly head again this past week or so, and yeah, I don’t have any answers to this question. I’m not particularly vested in this most recent pair of artists being exposed as bad people outside of their craft; I don’t have a dog in either fight. I have enjoyed one’s work in the past, and admired their craft, but…but the other I’ve never read. It’s easy for me to say the credible accusations are enough for me and to never read them again, but it’s not painful. I think the message from all of this is to be very careful who you make into a hero? I myself have been disappointed by celebrities and authors who’ve turned out to be terrible people in the real world; but actors aren’t their roles and authors aren’t their books, either. Performances and writing are necessarily of the person, of course, but…just because you love a character doesn’t mean the creator or the actor is a good person; the character is. Someone I’ve been reading for years and was probably my biggest favorite writer of my life has been disappointing on social media lately, and yes, I’ve allowed my politics and values to impact how I feel about him as both a person and as a writer…and if I cut other people off for being TERFs or homophobes, it’s hypocrisy to not cut off someone I admire for the same things. It helped me clear out some room in my bookshelves, and relieved me of the need to catch up on his work, which I was years behind on anyway, and you know what? I’m not sad about it, either. The books I loved I still love, I just don’t need to spend any more of my money buying new ones. Does it make me sad? It’s more disappointing than sad. They don’t care if I don’t buy another one of their books; one amongst millions is beneath even being noticed. But I blocked them on social media, which I didn’t have on my 2024 bingo card (didn’t have the media trying to pick the Democratic presidential candidate this late in the game either–and I will never forgive legacy media for this 2016-like “but her emails” reaction to ONE bad debate after three years of extraordinary leadership, either. I also didn’t have “legacy media not learning anything after 2016 and 2020” on my bingo card, either. I will not watch anyone ever again on television who are doing Project 2025’s dirty work for them (bye bye Rachel, we had a very good long run) and I will certainly never subscribe to or click on a link from a newspaper whose editorial board has gone all-in on Fascism under the arrogant guise of “we know better than Democratic voters who turned out for President Biden and have never once questioned his ability to do the job so best do what WE say”….um, excuse me? Who fucking died and made the opinions of arrogant political writers and pundits who think they know better than the voters? I trust the people around the President to help him run the country the right way, as opposed to the other candidate’s people; we’ve already seen the grifters and criminals he’ll surround himself with so they can loot the country. He doesn’t even have to be impaired for this to happen.

I certainly never thought I’d see the day when a third of the country and the media would be all-in on Fascism. Do the people at CNN, MSNBC, and the New York Times actually think they’d survive a Fascist government in this country? Or are they prepping for their collaborationism by collaborating now, so they can say see, we helped your rise to power?

And that cadaver James Carville, who’s been out of touch for at least twenty years, needs to crawl back into his coffin. Don’t forget what he married; the fact that he could happily marry a reich-winger, and stay married to her after 2016, tells me all I need to know about how craven and shallow his beliefs and values are.

God, the world has changed so much since I was a kid, hasn’t it? And I cannot say for certain it’s for the better in many instances. I do think trying to end bigotry of all kinds is an improvement, for sure, and while schools aren’t 100% safe for queer kids today, at least they may not feel as isolated as they did when I was a kid–even if they live in a red state.

Even in trying to look back to the world as it was in 1994 for my WIP shows such incredible changes in the country and the world in that thirty years (half my life at this point) that it almost seems like a different world, like that Earth was in a parallel dimension. But that’s the thing about the past–it was a different time and things that are problematic now were just normal and every-day things back then. And let’s not forget it wasn’t that long ago that marriages between tweens was an acceptable practice–and still is in some parts of the country.

Some deep thoughts on this damp Wednesday morning. We’re going to continue having thunderstorms on and off through the weekend–the tail end of Beryl moving through–which is fine with me; as long as I don’t caught in a flash flood or something. We were in a heat advisory all day yesterday, and then a flash flood warning from about seven p.m. on. Just another typical summer in New Orleans. We got caught up on House of the Dragon last night, and watched two more episodes of Outer Range, which is very bizarre but really interesting. It’s reminiscent of shows like Lost or Fringe, where there’s some kind of strangeness going on that no one is really sure what it is; it’s fascinating but I have literally no idea what is going on in the show. But it’s very well done, the acting is terrific, and visually it’s very stunning to watch. We’ll probably finish it this week and then will have to find something else.

And on that note, I am going to head into the spice mines. Have a lovely Wednesday, and I’ll probably be back later.

Sexy pro wrestler Finn Balor is a favorite of mine for obvious reasons–and he’s a great wrestler, too.

I Won’t Last a Day Without You

Good morning! For me, at least, today is the midpoint of the work week. I am delighted to have a four day weekend, and it will be glorious once it arrives. Yesterday was another odd one, to be honest; I felt fine when I got up, but gradually grew more tired until by the time I came home I was pretty exhausted. We did watch House of the Dragon–which felt like more filler than anything else, yet again (this series we’ll show the aftermath of the battles instead of the actual battle!) and I did some reading, but other than that the evening was pretty much wasted for the most part. I slept really well last night, and this morning I am awake and feeling good. That hasn’t happened in the morning for a while, so here’s hoping the energy and the good mood and the feeling good lasts all day, shall we? I am going to run errands after work tonight and go to the gym on the way home.

I also got a bit unhinged yesterday because someone on my Facebook feed posted one of those namby-pamby, we-can-disagree-politically-but-still-be-friends bullshit, and I will not apologize for seeing red. I unfriended and blocked so fast my keyboard was literally smoking. That level of privilege nauseates me, because it reduces me–and others who don’t fit the white nationalist/American Nazi definition of a real American–and my existence, my rights…to nothing more than a “political opinion.” This is what I mean when I talk about casual cruelty–and what posting bullshit like that means to people like me. Do any of you have any idea what it feels like to be dismissed so completely in this manner by someone who has never, ever had to wonder “I wonder if I didn’t get the job because I was too gay-presenting” or “was that person a homophobe or just an asshole in general” or “what is this carload of young men acting like idiots up to?”

And really, isn’t that the primary problem we have in this country? People who just want to put up their hands and surrender because it’s difficult and bigotry against you doesn’t really harm me so why should I lose friends because they think you’re not human? Ha ha ha, can’t we all just get along? and the answer, for the record, to that is always no. You see, I have no problem with homophobes being homophobic. I don’t care if you’re homophobic. You want to leave those braces on your brain, be my guest. But you don’t get to pass laws that make me not a whole American citizen.

It was also ironic that after a lovely Pride Month on-line for the most part, this shit-bird decided to turn into a good little German on July 1. “Okay, Pride’s over, time to shit on the gays some more! You should be nicer to the people who tell you you’re going to Hell and you’re a pervert and an abomination and a groomer and a pedophile because it’s just a political opinion.”

Sorry you had to feel a little discomfort there, Mr. Straight Ciswhiteman! Good thing you don’t have to deal with it every fucking day, or have to worry every election season that you’re rights are going to be voted away (or stolen by a corrupt, illegitimate Supreme Court), right, since you have so much trouble dealing with discomfort…and then ask yourself this: how would I feel if someone told my queer daughter that her entire existence is reduced to being considered simply an opposing political opinion?

That should make you feel extremely uncomfortable. But most Americans tend to avoid things that make them uncomfortable. Imagine being told to “straighten up” because I am making some straight person squirm.

Well, it’s not my fault that you immediately think about gay sex whenever I am around or I am talking to you. I don’t think about straight sex whenever I am around or talking to a straight person, so maybe you should take a long hard look at your own obsession with sex, and maybe start working through that on your own, or with a therapist if you can afford it or your insurance will cover it. Who’s the sex-crazed pervert in this instance, freak?

And I don’t want to be friends with anyone who thinks that way, or can rationalize things like “Well, I’ve known Jimmy since we were kids and he’s a good guy. It bugs me when he says he thinks all homosexuals should be killed, but I’ve had good times with him before and I know he just says that for a reaction, so we just don’t talk about politics.” I am “white” but I refuse to be friends with racists, or with misogynists just because I also have a penis. But then I know what it feels like to watch your friends die while ‘christians’ cheer about the fatal disease “because it’s killing all the right people.”

Evangelical Christians were perfectly okay with letting us die in the 1980s and laughing about those deaths, like their cohorts in the Westboro Baptist Church. Why would I ever believe they’ve changed their minds when they still are out there advocating for stripping us of our full citizenship and would actually like us all to start dying again?

Ugh. It’s sooooo tiring. And it’s always, always the same old “what about the children” bullshit. Groomer, pedophile, “they need to recruit” on and on and on, lather, rinse, repeat. What’s even worse is that the current crop are really in it for the grift and attention. I honestly believe that Anita Bryant, horror that she was, actually believed what she was saying and she wasn’t doing it for money, power or attention. She did evil while thinking she was doing right….but the present day professional homophobes are all about money and power and grifting less worldly religious freaks out of what little money they have left.

And on that bitter note, it’s off to the spice mines with me. Have a lovely Tuesday, and I may be back later. I do need to write another Pride post, and I need to write my entry about Horror Movie. Sigh. Onward and upward.

For the Love of Money

I firmly believe that writers should be paid for their work.

On the other hand, it ain’t easy making a living from writing.

Good morning, it’s Monday and I have the day off. If the plans hadn’t changed, I’d be driving back this morning and I would be very, very tired. Instead of spending the weekend visiting family, however, I spent the weekend at home getting things done. I worked on the filing some more yesterday, and will probably do so for at least part of today as well. The file drawers still need to be alphabetized, but all the “in process” book files have all been gathered together, duplicate files deleted, and I am in much better shape now with them than I have been in years. Sparky let me sleep until seven this morning, and I decided to stay up rather than going back to sleep after feeding him; since I need to get used to getting up again I thought it was smarter to just stay up. I’m going to read some this morning, and I also plan on writing today. I am going to make shrimp fajitas for dinner tonight, which is ambitious–but could be very tasty. We shall see how it all turns out, won’t we? But my kitchen is clean, the counters are all cleared off, and there’s a load of dishes that need to go into the dishwasher at some point today, too. There’s another load of laundry that also needs to be done, and I think I may just stay inside the house all day.

Last evening we got caught up on House of the Dragon and Interview with the Vampire, and I’ve got to say, Dragon moves at about a glacial pace. Very little has happened this season thus far, which is weird and odd. I mean, isn’t there going to be a dragon war? Why all this delay in getting the story moving again? They’ve all been preparing for war since the last episode of the original season and guess what? They still are. Vampire also moves at a slow pace, but it’s interesting to watch and is following the story of the book pretty closely, even with the differences and changes made to Mrs. Rice’s original works. Next week is the season finale, and I was a little taken aback that we’ve already watched so much of it already. Tonight we’ll get back to Dark Heart, and of course tomorrow it’s back to the office for one Gregalicious. I don’t mind, really, and the staycation I’ve been promising myself for August and my birthday is actually looking not only do-able but something to actually look forward to. I mean, look at all I got done this weekend! Maybe that will give me the motivation to clean and clear out the attic–stranger things have happened.

We’re also in a heat advisory until seven o’clock tonight. Hurray–and now it’s even more likely that I will not go outside today.

The opening of this entry–about writers deserving to be paid for their work–was inspired not only by today’s title, but by a post I saw on some social media by Gabino Iglesias, who is one of my favorite current writers (seriously, you need to check out The Devil Takes You Home, which was an Edgar finalist and won the Stoker for Best Novel; I can’t wait for his next book), and is one of the best authors to follow on social media because he’s all about supporting his fellow authors, giving good advice for those getting started, and basically boosting other authors every opportunity he gets. (There was also a thread from Nick Mamatas on the subject, in which he explained why some genres don’t pay well while others do.) The bottom line they both made was that everyone should get paid for their writing and no one should ever give it away–because accepting that your work has no monetary value is terrible and gives publishers an excuse for either low-balling or not paying anyone they publish. I’d never really thought about it that way, and I have been, throughout my career, guilty of doing work for free like an idiot or not properly placing a value on my work. Doing work for free has never really appealed to me; I certainly don’t give the day job one extra minute that is unpaid, but I often have gifted short stories to anthologies for one reason or another, mostly because the anthologies raise money for charity. Early on in my career, you see, I didn’t have extra money to donate to charity. When I worked for the airline, I did volunteer work for charities because I didn’t have money and that continued through developing my writing career. If I couldn’t donate cash, I’d donate my time or my work if the cause was something I believed in. I’ve also sold work that I was never paid for, either, which isn’t in the least bit acceptable.

Things to ponder.

One of the things I decided over the course of the weekend (I also figured out how to improve “The Sound of Snow Falling”, huzzah!) was that all the extra time I seem to have on my hands now that I no longer volunteer my time anymore can be better utilized than I’ve been doing; I am going to teach myself some things, I think, and I’m going to start working on doing more marketing and promotion, too. I also want to be able to take my time more with my writing; there really is no rush other than the ticking of the clock counting out the grains of sand left in my hourglass. I would like to finish every project that is unfinished at the moment, and of course I am always going to be getting more ideas all the time.

And is there any better way to unwind and relax after a day at the office than reading? I think not, and now that I can stream Spotify through the television, I am going to listen to music while I read and write and clean from now on rather than having something playing for background noise that I inevitably wind up watching rather than getting other things done.

And on that note, I am going to head into the spice mines. Have a lovely Monday, Constant Reader, and I will be back with a Pride post again later–I finally finished reading Sins of the Black Flamingo, and it definitely requires an entry of its own. Ta for now!

Heart of Gold

Well, we survived Monday, and it was in doubt there for a moment. I had some serious trouble getting motivated yesterday morning in order to leave the house for work, but I did eventually get out and on my way to work, and I had a pretty decent day there, too. It rained almost all day; it was hot and humid in the morning when I left for the office, but by mid-morning the city was being soaked by an almost constant stream of clouds throughout the day. Sigh. All I wanted to do was go back home and get under my blankets, but no such luck on that score, alas.

The most exciting news is yes, I did start writing my new book yesterday. Clocked in three thousand words on Chapter One, and it all flowed really easily. Granted, this project has been in my head for years–I think I wrote the first draft of the novella somewhere in the last ten years or so–but I am excited. I’ve been working on it for about a week now, doing the structural work behind the scenes of the story while also chopping up what was in the novella back into chapters. I am very excited to be working on this book for any number of reasons (not the least of which being that I’ve not worked on a book in a very long time) and it’s a departure from my usual. Sure, there’s crimes and stuff and New Orleans sweltering in a very hot summer, but it’s more ambitious of a story than I’ve tried in a while and I also am going to use dance songs as chapter titles, which is kind of cool. I am pleased with the work I’ve gotten done yesterday, and the direction the book is shaping up to take. It’s so lovely to be excited about writing again, you know?

I slept well last night–it rained all night, which meant the air was cool and damp and it felt amazing under my blankets. I am waking up now, which is nice–I feel very rested, even if my lower back is still a bit tight and sore–and my coffee is going down smoothly. It’s weird to have tomorrow off, and it’s even weirder that today is Pay-the-Bills Day, since tomorrow is a holiday. Such a weird week this is turning out to be on that score. And in a few weeks, I believe the 4th is a Thursday, so I might take that Friday off as well.

We did watch House of the Dragon last night, which was fun. I like how they’ve changed the opening credits to not be so similar to Game of Thrones, separating the show from the original but still connected. I don’t love this show the way we did the original, but it’s entertaining enough, and of course, dragons. I also suppose it’s not quite as compelling because we know the Targaryens eventually lose the Iron Throne and this civil war was the beginning of their end, and the end of the dragons until Danaerys.

Tonight after work I have to run some errands: a quick grocery run and a stop at the post office. I am planning on writing tonight–I really am excited about the this book, and it’s nice to be excited to be working again, you have no idea–and I also need to figure out some more pride posts. I’ve drafted a few ideas here, but am not really certain if some of the ideas I have are worth pursuing, so I need to think about them some more. It would also be nice to do some reading tonight after writing, too. (Tomorrow I will read, write, clean and go to the gym.) I’m actually looking forward to this day off, you know? Very strange and peculiar, but this week was going to be weird and feel off anyway, and a trip to Florida over the weekend. I checked the weather and it’s going to be rainy and overcast the entire weekend over there, but sunny and hot in New Orleans. Go figure. I should also probably check the tropical weather tracker; yesterday the system in the Bay of Campeche was moved from possible to potential cyclone status, and check the path as well. It was predicted for east Texas coast/Mexico yesterday….and that’s what it’s going to do. There’s one off the coast of Florida heading towards land, but it has very low chances of developing into anything before landfall. Christ, it’s so early in the season already to be worrying about storm tracks and so forth, and I hate the entire idea of evacuating again. Heavy sigh.

And I took a moment to check my email, and there was one from Dad, cancelling this weekend because my aunt is having some health issues. Ah, well, I’ll keep Monday off and treat myself to a nice three day weekend.

Which is a good time to bring this to a close. Happy Juneteenth Eve, everyone, and I’ll probably be later.

Follow Your Drum

Monday morning and it’s back to the office with me this morning. Woo-hoo! It’s going to be an oddly truncated week, I fear; the holiday on Wednesday and then driving to Florida after work on Friday definitely makes me feel the sense of claustrophobia with time; the sense that somehow I won’t have the time to do everything I’d like to do so I don’t have to worry about being off-line for three days or so. Sigh.

I slept really well last night, which was great. I didn’t want to get up this morning–not that I ever do–but the clarion call of the alarm and the knowledge that I can’t avoid it for long gradually overtakes my desire to stay warm and comfortable in the bed. We had some amazing rain yesterday (I made groceries between storms and got home before the rain started up again here; I drove home from Midcity in the pouring rain but it hadn’t gotten here yet), which was nice, and I managed to get some things done around here as well. I still haven’t gotten to the floors yet, but that could just be something I do on Wednesday. I can’t quite wrap my mind around the holiday in the middle of the week, but a day off is a day off, right?

We finished watching After the Flood last night, which had a surprising twist but an unsatisfying ending. It’s good, don’t get me wrong, but for a British crime show, that kind of last episode was a little disappointing. Your mileage might vary, of course, but overall it was a good show and we really enjoyed watching. I’d intended to start House of the Dragon last night, too, but was tired by the time the show ended and knew I wouldn’t be able to really give it the kind of attention it deserved, so put it off for at least another day. Paul generally works at home on Mondays, so we’ll be able to get our dragon fix possibly tonight.

I did get some work done on Never Kiss a Stranger yesterday, too. I pulled it apart and broke the scenes down into chapters, and now get to start piecing it all together again. I do think there’s enough story to be a short novel, probably between 70-80k, and I saw lots of places where things could be expanded or new things added; there’s a second story that needs to be woven into the text, which I always knew was missing from the story as a novella, I just couldn’t think of how to weave it in while keeping it novella length, and I think that particular subplot is maybe the most important thing to the entire story? Heavy sigh. I also started creating the characters in more depth, too, and began seeing what new characters were needed for the story. All in all, a very good day’s work. It’s not going to be easy expanding this out into a novel, and I enjoyed what I was doing yesterday; it was extremely satisfying, and again I had to wonder why I always have to force myself to write when I always enjoy it more than almost anything else in the world that I do. It was lovely feeling like a writer again, which is something I’m not sure I’ve enjoyed as much over the past few years. And yes, that is sad. What I did yesterday was mostly editorial and prep work, but it was fun in a way I don’t remember experiencing in a very long time. But that could also be my faulty memory? Stranger things have happened.

I also didn’t read as much of my book as I would have liked. I did find some shorter books to listen to on the way to Florida and back next weekend, which will be fun–I’ve really gotten into this listening on long drives thing, which is a very pleasant development–but I’ll take it with me this weekend to read.

And on that note, I am heading into the spice mines. Have a lovely day, Constant Reader, and I may be back later with a pride post. One never knows!

Down by the Lazy River

Happy Father’s Day to all who celebrate. As for me, I’m meeting Dad in Florida on Friday for a nice weekend in Panama City Beach, although I seriously doubt that I’ll be going outside very much. The older I get, the less I can stand to be in the heat–which is something younger Greg would have laughed at very hard. I no longer care about being tan, either, as yet another fragment of vanity disappears from my head. Today I have to go out into the heat to make groceries, but other than that I am staying happily indoors and trying to get some more work done. We also have Wednesday off, of course, for Juneteenth, which is going to make for an odd work week, methinks, which is also payday.

I am feeling a bit groggy this morning but I haven’t had my first cup of coffee, either. Ah, there’s that first sip, sending warmth and energy through my system. I plan to do some writing today; I had a really good time yesterday unpacking and deconstructing the 20k+ words I already have done for this project, and I do think expanding it out into a novel is a good idea; I think it will make for a very good book if it accomplishes what I am setting out to do with it–and of course, as soon as I have those ambitious thoughts good old Imposter Syndrome rears its ugly head. AH, well, but feeling like I’m back inside my writer’s skin inevitably was going to trigger that, wasn’t it? Sadly, it’s all part and parcel of being a writer, and I just need to shrug it off entirely and focus on the work. So, while I generally despise Imposter Syndrome, I welcome it now because it’s a signpost on the way to getting back to being a full time writer after several years of being swamped and stressed and everything else that went on since 2016, really. It’s been almost a decade since Mom’s first stroke and she started living, essentially, on borrowed time. I think that was the start of the cloud in my brain, and that odd sense that time is running out. It feels lovely to be out of that; I’ve not experienced it for quite some time now, and I think the rest of this year might actually turn out to be incredibly productive for me. Here’s hoping, anyway.

Yesterday was lovely. Sparky got me up before eight, which was fine (he let me sleep until eight this morning), and I got up and started working. I did some cleaning, and I also did some writing, and some planning. Last night I scribbled away merrily in my journal, listing characters and figuring out backstories for them, so that they can be fully realized when I write about them. I do think this one, and the one after, are going to be some of my best work, which feels great, you know? I was also looking over the prologue to The Summer of Lost Boys, and rewrote some of it in my head, which I will need to transcribe at some point today as well. I didn’t really leave the house yesterday, which was great. I spent some time reading the new Paul Tremblay, Horror Movie, which I am really enjoying. (I always enjoy reading Tremblay; he’s one of the best of the new crop of names in the horror community, and not a single book or story of his that I’ve read wasn’t an incredibly enjoyable experience.) We finished getting caught up on The Boys (it cracks me up that the right-wingers are suddenly realizing that the show actually makes fun of them, and the ‘heroes’ they were rooting for were actually the villains. Sucks to be MAGA), and then we dove back into After the Flood, which is absolutely terrific and interesting.

Oh! And House of the Dragon returns tonight. Huzzah!

I slept well again last night, so getting up to Sparky’s determination to get fed was fine with me this morning. The first cup of coffee is currently working its magic in my bloodstream and I am waking up, which is marvelous. I do have some things I need to do this morning–the kitchen is a bit of a wreck this morning, and the floors need to be done–but I am hoping to spend the day, outside of the grocery store, inside working on the book and getting my shit together for the week. Make a to-do list, try to remember all the things I want to submit to, and get organized. I never feel organized, and haven’t in a while, which is part of the off-balance thing that’s been going on since 2016 or so.

And on that note, I am heading into the spice mines. Have a lovely Sunday/Father’s Day, and I may be back later with some other posts about being gay and Pride and other great moments from my gay life.

(I Can’t Get No) Satisfaction

And here we are, on the final day of the year 2022. Happy New Year, I guess? It doesn’t feel like the year is turning, but everything has felt so totally out of whack since the 2020 Shutdown that it’s not a surprise, really. As I sit here bleary-eyed with my coffee trying to wake up for another thrilling day of writing and cleaning, it seems very weird to look back to a year ago at this time. I was on deadline then, too–and was way behind on that book, too (A Streetcar Named Murder, for the record), but other than that I don’t remember what my mood was like or what I was thinking about going into the new year. We were still in the midst of the pandemic (that hasn’t changed–what’s changed is it isn’t news anymore and everyone seems to be pretending it’s all over), and I know I wasn’t exactly going into 2022 thinking oh this is the year I’ll get the coronavirus! That did happen, and my ten-day experience with COVID-19 was bearable for the most part. I just had intense and severe exhaustion as well as the brain fog, which hasn’t entirely lifted. I still have no short term memory, and am struggling to remember things every day–which has made writing this book more difficult because I can’t remember small details and things that are kind of important. I also think being so scattered isn’t much help in that regard; I’ve never been able to handle getting a grip on things and have felt like I’ve been behind the eight-ball for the last three years, floundering and struggling to keep my head above water, and never confident that I had a handle on everything. It’s been unpleasant, really; I prefer to be better organized and to have things under some sort of manageable control, and this constant feeling that I am behind and will never catch up on everything has been overwhelming, depressing, and damaging.

I read a lot of great books this year–I was going to try to make a “favorite reads of the year” list, but as I went back through the blog for the last year looking at all the books I talked about on here, there’s no real way for me to quantify what were my avorite reads of the year. I managed to read both of Wanda M. Morris’ marvelous novels, All Her Little Secrets and Anywhere You Run; Marco Carocari’s marvelous Blackout; John Copenhaver’s The Savage Kind; Carol Goodman’s The Night Villa, The Lake of Dead Languages, and The Disinvited Guest; Ruth Ware’s The Death of Mrs. Westaway and The Woman in Cabin Ten; Raquel V. Reyes’ Mango, Mambo and Murder; Ellen Byron’s Bayou Book Thief; Rob Osler’s debut Devil’s Chew Toy; Mia P. Manansala’s Arsenic and Adobo; Kellye Garrett’s Like a Sister; Alex Segura Jr’s Secret Identity; Laurie R. King’s Back to the Garden; Tara Laskowski’s marvelous The Mother Next Door; James Kestrel’s Five Decembers (which would be a contender for favorite read of the year, if I did such things); and of course several Donna Andrews novels as well. I am forgetting some great reads I truly enjoyed this past year, I am sure–I will kick myself later for not remembering I Play One on TV by Alan Orloff, for one example–but it was a year of great reads for me. I know 2023 will also be a great year for reading.

I also watched a lot of great television this past year as well, and again, I won’t be remembering everything and will kick myself later. If nothing else, it was a year of some amazing queer representation on television; this was, after all, the year Netflix not only gave us the wonderful, amazing, adorable Heartstopper but the equally charming and adorable Smiley (which you should watch, absolutely). It was also the year where Elité continued, but the shine is starting to go off the show a bit. I was very vested in their Patrick/Ivan romance, which they ended in this last season with Manu Rios, who plays Patrick, leaving the show at the end of the season along with his two sisters (spoiler, sorry), which was dissatisfying. I am looking forward to seeing what else Manu Rios gets up to in the future…we also enjoyed 1899, Andor, Ted Lasso, Sex Lives of College Girls, Peacemaker, The Sandman, House of the Dragon, Ozark, and so many other shows I can’t possibly begin to remember them all this morning. But I have no problem saying that without question my favorite show of the year was Heartstopper. Even just looking at clips on Youtube, or those “Ten Cutest Moments on Heartstopper” videos, always makes me feel warm and fuzzy when I view them. The soundtrack for the show was also terrific, with some songs so firmly engrained in my head with scenes from the show (one in particular, Shura’s “What’s It Gonna Be” always makes me think of that scene where Charlie comes running after Nick in the rain to give him another kiss, which is what was playing in the background). Wednesday was another highlight, a surprising delight when I was prepared to have my hopes dashed, and The Serpent Queen was also a lot of fun. We also enjoyed The Bastard Son and the Devil Himself, but it was cancelled after its first season, which was disappointing.

Professionally, it was a pretty good year in which I had three book releases: #shedeservedit in January and A Streetcar Named Murder in December, with the anthology Land of 10000 Thrills, thrown in for good measure in the fall. I sold some short stories that haven’t come out yet, as well as some that did this last year: “The Rosary of Broken Promises,” “A Whisper from the Graveyard,””The Snow Globe,” and “This Thing of Darkness” all came out in anthologies this year, with “Solace in a Dying Hour” sold and probably coming out sometime in the spring. I also sold another story to another anthology that will probably come out in the new year as well, and I still have one out on submission. In what was probably the biggest surprise of the year, last year’s Bury Me in Shadows was nominated for not one, but TWO Anthony Awards (Best Paperback Original and Best Children’s/Young Adult) which was one of the biggest shocks of maybe not just the year, but definitely one of the highlights of my career thus far. I lost both to friends and enormously talented writers Jess Lourey and Alan Orloff respectively, which was kind of lovely. I had been nominated for Anthonys before (winning Best Anthology for Blood on the Bayou and “Cold Beer No Flies” was nominated for Best Short Story), but being nominated for one of my queer novels was such a thrill–and to have it nominated in two different categories was fucking lit, as the kids would say. The response to A Streetcar Named Murder was an incredibly pleasant surprise; people seemed to genuinely love the book, which was very exciting and cool.

I traveled quite a bit this year as well–going to Murder in the Magic City/Murder on the Menu, Left Coast Crime, the Edgars, Sleuthfest, and Bouchercon. I went to Kentucky twice to see my family, which further fueled my love of audiobooks for long drives–on both trips I listened to Ruth Ware on the way up and Carol Goodman on the way back–and also did some wonderful podcasts and panels on-line, which was nice. We didn’t go to any games this season in Baton Rouge, but in all honesty I don’t know if I can hang with a game day anymore–the drive there and back, the walk to and from the stadium, the game itself–I would probably need a week’s vacation afterwards!

College football was interesting this season, too. This season saw the reemergence of Tennessee, USC, and UCLA to some kind of relevance again; the slides of the programs at Texas A&M, Florida, Oklahoma, Auburn, and Texas continued; and LSU turned out to be the biggest surprise (for me) of the year. Going into the season I had hopes, as one always does, but after two years of consistent mediocrity (with some surprise wins both years) they weren’t very high. The opening loss to Florida State was a surprise and disappointment, but at least the Tigers came back and almost made it all the way to a win. The blowout loss to Tennessee at home was unpleasant, certainly, as was the loss at Texas A&M. But LSU beat Alabama this season! We also beat Mississippi, so LSU was 2-2 against Top Ten teams this season–and I would have thought it would be 0-4. And 9-4 is not a bad record for a transitional year, with a new coach rebuilding the program. And LSU beat Alabama. The Alabama game will undoubtedly go down as one of the greatest Saturday night games in Tiger Stadium. It was incredibly exciting, and I still can’t quite wrap my mind around it or how it happened. It certainly shouldn’t have; LSU was simply not an elite-level team this past season, but what a job Brian Kelly did coaching in his first season in Baton Rouge. Did I mention that LSU beat Alabama this year? (And one really has to feel for Alabama, in a way; they lost two games by a total of four points on the last play of each game. Four. Points. That would probably be what I would call this season for Alabama: Four Points from Greatness. The LSU-Alabama game this year is definitely one of those that gets a nickname from the fan base, I am just not sure what it would be. The Double Earthquake Game? (The cheers when LSU scored in overtime and then made the two point conversion registered on the campus Richter scale) The Conversion Game? I don’t know what it will be named for all eternity, but it was an amazing game. I do think it also bodes well for the future for LSU. Will both LSU and Tennessee (which also beat Alabama for the first time in like fifteen years) be able to consistently compete with Alabama now? Has Georgia taken over as the SEC behemoth? Has the Alabama run ended? I don’t think so–they have an off year where they lose two or three games periodically (2010, 2019, 2022)–and they could bounce right back. next year and win it all again. You can never count them out, even in their off years.

As for the Saints, they swept Atlanta again this year, and that is enough for me.

I did write a lot this year, even though it didn’t seem like I actually did while the year was passing. I also worked on Chlorine and another project I am working on throughout the year, as well as the novellas, and of course, I was writing short stories and essays for much of the year. I also read a lot more New Orleans and Louisiana history, and I had tons of ideas for things to write all year long. I did make it to the gym on a fairly regular basis at the beginning of the year, but then it became more and more sporadic and after my COVID-19 experience, never again. I also injured my arm a few weeks ago–when I flex the bicep it feels like I have a Charley horse, so not good, but it doesn’t impact my day to day activities. I also had my colonoscopy at last this past year–the prep was horrific, and I am really dreading doing it again at sixty-five, should I make it that far.

Yesterday was a nice day. I was exhausted, and after my work-at-home duties were completed I did some chores–laundry, dishes–and I also spent some time both reading (A Walk on the Wild Side) and writing. I also watched the Clemson-Tennessee Orange Bowl last night before Paul got home from his dinner engagement and we watched a few more episodes of Sex Lives of College Girls. Today I am going to read a bit this morning with my coffee before getting cleaned up and diving headfirst back into the book. Paul has his trainer today and usually either goes to the gym to ride the bike or to his office to work for the rest of the afternoon, so I should be able to have some uninterrupted writing time, which will be lovely. And on that note I am heading into the spice mines. Have a happy and safe New Year’s Eve, Constant Reader, and I will check back in with you later.

Mystified

Monday morning and all is quiet in the Lost Apartment. I am heading back into the office this morning–I have a lot of trainings to get done today, as well as plenty of my own day job work that needs to get finished–and then I hope to come home and get some work on the book done, as well as some cleaning up around here. I made dinner last night and I made chili in the slow cooker, so the sink is full and the counters a bit on the sloppy side. I feel well rested this morning, which is something I’ve noticed happens on Monday mornings now that I have shifted my work-at-home days again; when it was Monday I always somehow woke up tired every Tuesday morning and starting the week off being tired was always unpleasant, as it continued building until the weekend. I think I needed this past weekend to get rest, to be honest; I’ve been feeling a lot of fatigue lately. I’m also worried a bit about burnout, too–I am not feeling 100% this morning, to be honest, but my COVID test was negative, small victories–and I am wondering if it might not be my blood sugar. I’ve noticed lately that my blood sugar sometimes spikes and then wanes, and again, I have to wonder if that has anything to do with my eating habits and so forth. I felt hungry a lot all weekend, yet nothing sounded either appetizing or appealing to eat. I didn’t make dinner on Saturday–I was going to make Salisbury steaks–and so while the chili cooked yesterday I made the steaks. They were good–Paul didn’t have any, he waited for the chili–and then this morning again I felt like my blood sugar was low enough for me to be concerned about it. (the last time I had lab work done it was high; which reminds me, I need to have it done again soon.)

I worked on the book this weekend around my fits of fatigue and television watching; yesterday we watched House of the Dragon (enjoyed), The Serpent Queen (not one of the better ones), and Interview with the Vampire (I was rather disappointed with this episode, which is a shame; I loved how they were doing Claudia when they first introduced her but missed the mark with this one, methinks). We also started watching A Friend of the Family, which led me to remark at some point, “You know, the 1970’s really were awful for the most part, weren’t they? The clothes, the cars, the furniture, the home decor, the hair…everything was a style crime.” Watching this, it’s very hard to imagine that such a thing could happen–there seems to be this sense of innocence in non-urban areas (sorry, but Pocatello, Idaho doesn’t really count to me as an urban area, apologies to Idahoans) that lasted from the 1950’s through the 1970’s so things like this could happen. And while fathers and mothers were always deeply concerned about their daughters’ sexuality and keeping it locked down until they were “safely” married; it would never enter the minds of good Christian people that someone who went to church with them and was a close family friend (although there was some incredibly questionable behavior, and the ‘family friend’–played with just the right dose of charm and smarm by Jake Lacy–really crossed many lines) would be a child molester or a pervert or a sexual deviant; people were sooooo convinced back then that you could actually spot such a person because they were so vile and depraved it had to show; the character I find the most interesting is the family friend’s wife, who was clearly emotionally (if not physically) beaten down by her husband and clearly had what we now call ‘Stockholm syndrom’–that, to me, is the interesting story. How could you write such a story from her perspective and gain the reader’s sympathies and understanding?

Paul is leaving for slightly over a week on Friday and there’s no LSU game this weekend–there are some interesting games on this weekend, but nothing I actually need to watch; I can always check scores and watch highlights if I need to; the big conference games this weekend are Georgia-Florida and Tennessee-Kentucky–no need to watch either, other than they are rivalry games and thus one can never be sure of how might actually win the game; Florida and Kentucky certainly needs the wins more. How wild would that be if both undefeated teams in the East went down to defeat in the same weekend? So, I think I’ll spend the weekend writing, reading and cleaning. I don’t really need to hit the grocery store for much since Paul will be gone, either. We’ll see how much I can get done, and we’ll see how productive my evenings are going to be. Scooter will be much more needy than usual, but rather than just hanging out in my chair and watching tv with him in my lap I can actually watch television in bed when I get home at night…an interesting thought.

I am also enjoying my reread of The Haunting of Hill House, and my God, how much do I love the way Shirley Jackson writes? I think my holy trinity of women writers of dark fiction (I can’t really call Jackson a crime writer, although there’s some terrific overlap) are du Maurier, Jackson, and Mary Stewart. Stewart isn’t really a dark writer, though; I don’t know what to call them but those three women are probably, if I had to pick three, my holy trinity. The Haunting of Hill House is so melancholic and dreamlike; the word choices and the sentence structures and the paragraph construction things of absolute beauty. I also love the character of Nell (I wonder how much she influenced Stephen King in his creation of Carrie?) and how sad and lonely and despondent she is, particularly since she is so young (just past thirty). Then again, at the time it was written that was pretty much middle-age and she would have been considered a spinster.

The weather has turned into the beautiful fall we always enjoy in New Orleans; that we long for yet forget about during those long, hot, damp hideous days of summertime. I am also expecting some things in the mail; an anthology I contributed a story to a very long time ago is supposed to drop this month, and when I met with the Crooked Lane publicist at Bouchercon she told me I’d get my box of author copies in late Halloween; so I am resisting the urge to run to the post office every day just in case. It has been eighteen years since I had a hardcover release of any kind; it’s kind of lovely to have one again after all this time. I need to start posting about the new book a lot more once November 1 pops up on the calendar; as the countdown to the release date draws near I need to amp up the promotion. Does it work? I don’t know, to be honest, and that often makes it hard for me to want to make the effort at all.

And on that note, I need to get cleaned up and head into the spice mines for the day. Have a lovely Monday, Constant Reader, and I will speak to you again tomorrow morning in the darkness of the predawn.

Oh Diane

Monday morning and a good morning to you all. I feel rested this morning, if a bit intimidated by what all I have to get down this week but I’m just going to update and make a new to-do list this morning and just start working my way down it, you know? I was still a little unwell yesterday–I used to be able to shake of a mild fever and still get things done, but that doesn’t seem to be the case anymore. I feel better this morning–I always feel better in the mornings; it tends to come on during the course of the day, alas–so I’m hoping whatever mild thing that was is over and no more. I don’t have any COVID tests here at home (note to self: pick some up today at the office) so I can’t test myself until I get to work, but I don’t think that’s what this is (but better safe than sorry, just in case). I did manage to get some writing done yesterday–not very good writing, but it got done–and I read more of ‘salem’s Lot, which still holds up remarkably well (I just got to the part where Danny Glick dies…oops, spoiler). I know King was going for a more Gothic type style in this book (he patterned it along the lines of Dracula, if I recall correctly) and that sense of brooding and creepiness is there to very good effect. As I said yesterday, it would be edited down today by at least a third if King were a new writer; and I think the shorter books we get nowadays kind of do us a disservice, as both readers and writers? That could also explain why I always feel like my own books don’t cover enough material and so forth–because the books I grew up reading were longer than the books getting published today and the ones that I myself am writing.

We watched The Serpent Queen, House of the Dragon, and Interview with the Vampire last evening (I couldn’t watch the Saints game yesterday–the games are too stressful plus it was hard for me to not root for Joey Burrow and Ja’Marr Chase to do well, so my loyalties were divided which made it more stressful, and this morning I feel like I’ve betrayed the Saints), all of which are getting more interesting. The Serpent Queen has begun to deviate from the actual history–dramatically so, especially in light of last night’s episode–which is disappointing but understanding; the great game of politics in the mid-sixteenth century was insanely complex, so I can see why they’d want to simplify it in order for it to be more easily digested by the audience as most Americans have no clue about anything that happened in that century outside of easily digestible bits without nuance: Henry VIII had six wives; religious conflict; Bloody Mary, Spanish Armada and Mary Queen of Scots was beheaded.

It always cracks me up how everyone loved Game of Thrones but get bored about the real history that puts Martin to shame, really.

I’m plowing ahead on the book even though I know Chapter 5 is a sloppy, disgusting and terrible mess. I need to get the rest of the draft done so I can go through it and start fixing things; I’ll probably need to fix some of it before I can move on to Chapter 6 but the plan this week is to move ahead and try to get as much done as possible so the first draft can be finished by the end of the month so I can then spend the rest of December making the fixes it so desperately needs (I think the primary problem with it is that it’s out of order; I crammed too much into the beginning of the book and now I need to go back and put it in the proper context and order, which will all be a part of the extensive revision process this book is going to be sorely in need of…which just makes me tired, frankly, to think about.). I am trying very hard not to get horribly stressed about everything I need to get done…

And I have a book coming out in six weeks. YIKES.

I missed a short story deadline from this past weekend, which is a shame. But I didn’t feel well all weekend, really–I know the flu shot doesn’t get anyone sick, but can I help it if every time I get one I do? It just seems like an odd coincidence that almost every time I get a flu shot I spend the next few days not feeling 100%–and I hate the feel of a low grade fever. Either go big or go home, god damn it! But my body seems to be sliding back into the normal routine of Monday thru Thursday in the office and Friday as my work-at-home; which I am hoping means that once I get home every night, I can be certain to do some work and chores around the house before settling into my easy chair, exhausted, to wind down before going to bed. We’re all caught up now on our weekly shows, so can go back to Diary of a Gigolo, which is interesting and fun to watch, if a little complicated and sometimes hard to follow–but Spanish-language shows are so much better and faster moving than English language counterparts; they never have a filler episode like so many American shows do to pad out their seasons.

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