Tag: insomnia

Whenever I Call You “Friend”

Good morning, Sunday! I slept late again this morning despite Sparky’s best efforts, and after all those years of insomnia, I do enjoy getting up later. Yesterday was a pretty decent day, overall. I did some things, ran some errands, did chores and kind of overdid it…I was tired by the mid-afternoon, so just hung out in my chair with Sparky in my lap, and we watched some television while Paul dozed on and off for the rest of the day. Some of what we watched was research, so it’s not like I blew off the entire day or anything. The weather has also cooled; it was in the mid-eighties yesterday with a very low degree of humidity so it was actually pleasant outside (and yes, calling the mid-eighties pleasant and almost fall-like is an indication of how hellishly hot here these last few months)–supposed to be similar today, and since I have to walk to Walgreens later on, I’m hoping it is just like yesterday. I think we’re supposed to have cooler weather the rest of the week? The Katrina anniversary is also this Friday–so glad it’s my work-at-home day.

We finished watching Smoke last night and we really enjoyed it. Taron Egerton is a terrific actor, and I love Jurnee Smollett in everything I see her in. There were lots of twists and turns, and the show changes its centering in almost every episode, with some very clever writing sleight-of-hand along the way that always keeps you guessing. It was very well done, and I do recommend it.

I also watched the HBO documentary The Serial Killer’s Apprentice (I also have the book in my TBR stack). I’ve been interested in the Dean Corll/Candyman murders since I first heard about them when I lived in Houston back in 1989-1991, and one of my future projects is rooted in that horrific true crime story. We certainly do know a lot more about psychology, abuse, and grooming nowadays, and so Dr. Katherine Ramsland, who wrote the book based on her interviews with Corll’s teenaged ‘helper’, Elmer Wayne Henley Jr. The documentary doesn’t get into what Corll and his helpers did to those poor boys, but it was horrific. One torture detail that has stuck in my mind all these years since I first heard about the case and read a book about it–I don’t remember the title, but it was fairly old and was written shortly after the trials, and wasn’t terribly long. (When I talk about The Summer of Lost Boys, that’s my Candyman book.) Watching this documentary gave me some other ideas about how to write and structure said book.

I also had the television on for background noise while I was cleaning and doing things yesterday, and tuned in for the Kansas State-Iowa State game from Dublin (KSU lost). I cannot believe it’s football season already, with LSU playing this coming Saturday at Clemson.

The Cracker Barrel uproar from the MAGA morons has been incredibly amusing, but they do have a point. The redesign of the interiors is soulless and horrible, but as for removing the old man and the barrel and the words “old country store” off their logo? It is just rebranding to try to get a new customer base since theirs is dying off. Why is change so hard and terrifying for people to accept? I’ll never understand the perpetual victimhood of right-wingers, myself–yet they call us snowflakes. God, there are few things I despise more than hypocrisy. The only constant in life is change, so fighting change is a fool’s errand, and I sure don’t have time for that, although it sure seems a lot of other people do. It must be nice having a life that allows you the energy and time to waste bitching about a corporate decision that ultimately doesn’t affect or impact anyone in any way, shape or form.

But they have opinions, and of course, it’s the libs’ fault, even though most of couldn’t possibly give less of a shit about Cracker Barrel’s logo. But that redesign of the restaurant space is a mistake, a very big mistake. I maybe eat at a Cracker Barrel once a year with Dad when I’m in Kentucky, but that’s about it. Cracker Barrel hasn’t gotten this kind of attention since they were racist homophobes back in the day.

Had I but known how triggering this would be for the right-wing snowflakes, I would have pushed for a logo redesign for Cracker Barrel decades ago.

And on that note, I am heading into the spice mines. There’s a lot of mess I need to clean up this morning, and I want to read a bit before Paul goes to his trainer. Have a lovely Sunday, Constant Reader, and I’ll be back either later or tomorrow, okay?

Ah, those Chippendales calendars in the 80s!

Moving in Stereo

Good morning, Constant Reader! Hope you sprang forth from your bed wide awake and a-rarin’ to go, because today is Wednesday! We’ve made it to the halfway point again this week! Huzzah! Although this week hasn’t been terrible, other than being tired when I get home from work every day. I feel oddly more awake and alert this morning; not sure what that is about, but I am not going to argue with it, either. I’ll ride this wave as long as it lasts before petering out at shore.

It rained off and on for most of the day and it was gloomy a lot yesterday. I am never really sure what’s going on with the weather when I am at work; my testing room doesn’t have a window, and I don’t get near the windows on the floor very often. But a couple of clients were wet from the rain when they came in, and the few times I was around the front desk I could see the rain. It was nice when I made groceries after work, but it started sprinkling when I got home and it rained for most of the night. I got very tired yesterday afternoon, just as I was getting ready to head home. (I did cancel one errand I was going to run because I was tired, but was very proud of myself for making groceries.) I also did some writing work when I got home, too. Yay for me! I’ve not really experienced the page opening and me falling into it yet1. I haven’t had that experience in quite a while; which I think is what has been fueling the Imposter Syndrome2 of the last few years. But I am slowly doing more and more, and my creativity, despite being covered in dust and cobwebs, is getting better, too.

I slept well again last night–trust me, I do not miss insomnia–and could happily go back to bed this morning. It looks like a sunny morning out there, and the forecast shows no rain for the day.

Then again, yesterday’s forecast said no rain until the evening, too. They’re inevitably always wrong here in the tropical season.

I do think being tired affects my ability to write, because now when I’m tired physically, I also am tired emotionally and mentally.

Being Tuesday, I made tacos for dinner last night when I got home and in spite of being tired, I managed to do the dishes before making dinner. Paul came downstairs, and I queued up Unspeakable Sins, which continues to be a rollercoaster ride (spoiler: the only decent character in the show is the escort; everyone else is kind of awful but so fun to watch) and we’re over halfway finished. There were two more kidnappings and now everyone knows the faked death was actually faked and Claudio is still alive–and last night we did find out who was behind everything going on. I kind of suspected that character already, and they just became a lot more interesting! One thing I have noticed about this show–I noticed it right away–is how they’ve embraced the physical beauty of Andres Baida and how much the camera sexualizes him in a way usually reserved for women3. He is shirtless in every episode at least once, and we generally see his bare ass every episode too–and how the camera lingers on his body is the way it usually does on women. His introduction to the viewers was him rising from a swimming pool in tight little square cuts, slowly revealing his muscular form as it rose, shining and wet and dripping, out of the water. Last night there was an episode where he was being tortured for information by a ruthless gangster. His wrists were chained together, his shirt was gone, and his arms were straight overhead, the chain holding him up. He looked like he was being lifted right out of his low-rise pants which were barely hanging on, his face and torso covered in oil and sweat and some blood, and it looked almost like a scene from a gay bondage porn film.

And tonight Wednesday drops. Huzzah!

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

I always thought Michael Newman was hotter than David Hasselhoff on BAYWATCH.
  1. Callback/shout out to Misery by Stephen King. ↩︎
  2. Whom we are no longer listening to under any circumstances. ↩︎
  3. Make no mistake, I am on board with the sexualization of men in film and television. ↩︎

If We Make It Through December

I finally slept last night, and it felt amazing. I could have easily stayed in bed for another two or three hours, but that 9-to-5 is calling to me (well, 7:30-4:30, but you know what I mean). I was worried that I was getting sick–surgery recovery, medication changes, not being able to sleep, dehydration, occasionally feeling slightly feverish, and some occasional nausea (while eating, so I wasn’t eating as much, either. My COVID tests were always negative (still are, this morning), so I have to put it down to simply being exhausted from not being able to sleep, because this morning I feel good, if a bit sleepy. Everything was dragging ass last night when I got off work; but I made myself run the needed errands on the way home, and thus today I am really delighted to know that I can come straight home from the office and get caught up on some other things. I also did some chores, despite feeling like I was at death’s door by the time I got home. (And I am so glad I bought that wagon; it makes life so much easier and I will continue to use it even after the brace is gone and my arm is healed.)

Insomnia is the worst. I don’t know how people who have it chronically manage, seriously. One night is bad enough, but a couple of nights in a row is enough to completely derail me, so I cannot imagine having it every fucking night. I mean, it wouldn’t really take much to drive me over the edge anyway–I always have such a delicate grip on my sanity as it is, without having further contributing factors. I was too tired to read last night, so I figured doing chores was the right way to go with everything last night. I did think about the new book I am writing, so even though I didn’t add to my word counts yesterday, I did think about where the book needs to go, and thinking about what I am writing and puzzling out the plot and where the book needs to go next counts. We also finished Big Vape last night, which was really interesting and made me think about a lot of things, and started A Murder at the End of the World while we wait for Prime to drop season two of Reacher, which is finally launching this Friday (huzzah! I love Alan Ritchson, and have since he first appeared as Aquaman on Smallville), and of course the bowl games are also starting this weekend–but there really aren’t many this early that I care about watching; most of the bowls end up serving as background noise while I do other things–clean, prune the books, write in my journal, read, edit pages–but seriously, now that I’ve slept well for one night, I feel like I can conquer the world again, and I’ve not felt that way in a very long time. It’s a nice feeling, really.

This year has been, as I said, a rollercoaster that doesn’t seem to be coming back to the station any time soon, and this wild up-and-down ride this year has made me reflect on who I am, why I am who I am, and reset my brain and attitudes about a lot of things because once I realized oh this is why you’re like this and that and so forth I could dissect, and rethink those attitudes–a lot of which was childhood training about how to approach life, which I inevitably took to extremes. Be humble and don’t brag became self-deprecating to the point that I would think or say things about myself or my career that would be horribly offensive if said by someone else…because in my chemically-unbalanced brain, criticism won’t bother you as much if you preempt it, which is the same weirdly off mentality that led to the complete lack of self-esteem about my body and my looks and my intelligence and well, pretty much everything….which means that I was always looking for affirmation from others, and when it didn’t come, it simply confirmed the negative things I was thinking and/or saying about myself.

There’s nothing wrong in being proud of yourself; as my friend Laura says, “Sing out, Louise!” because the obverse of the way I think about negative commentary (“need to fend this off by beating them to the punch”) also works the other way–“If I don’t believe in myself, why would anyone else?”

And I am proud of myself, and the writing career I’ve somehow managed to blunder and stumble my way into. As the tarot card reader told me when we first moved to New Orleans twenty-seven years ago, I did become an author but it’s nothing like I ever dreamed of, imagined, or considered possible. I’ve written so many books, short stories, essays, book reviews, blog posts, and edited so many anthologies that I am not even sure how many there are now–and it’s even more than most people know, because there are pseudonyms I’ve never publicly claimed and books that were ghostwritten or work for hire under a veritable plethora of other names. I think my last six (!) books (Royal Street Reveillon, Bury Me in Shadows, #shedeservedit, A Streetcar Named Murder, Death Drop, and Mississippi River Mischief) are some of my best work, and the last few short stories to come out (“The Rosary of Broken Promises”, “This Thing of Darkness”, “The Affair of the Purloined Rentboy”, “Solace in a Dying Hour”, and “The Ditch”) are also some of my best stories. I am very pleased with how I’ve grown and developed in my writing, and I want to continue to grow and develop and keep getting better. My biggest fear is that my best work is behind me and I’ll keep going, getting worse with every new project until finally no one is buying anything I write anymore. I’d still write, anyway–I’ll be writing on my laptop on my death bed, and they will have to pry it from my cold dead fingers–and probably self-publish or something.

And on that note, I am heading into the spice mines on this cold morning in New Orleans. Have a marvelous Wednesday, Constant Reader, and I’ll check back in later.

In Another Land

My flight was two and a half hours delayed yesterday due to the FAA system crash yesterday morning, which was, of course, tiresome. But I eventually got to board my flight, finished reading A Walk on the Wild Side (I literally finished it when we were taxiing to the gate, so perfect timing, and more on that book later), then collected my bag and got my car service into Manhattan. I checked in, went up to my room, and then had dinner as Connolly’s Irish Pub, where our waiter was stunned and delighted to see my LSU sweatshirt–he was a fan! (That happened again in the elevator on the way up to my room–who knew Manhattan was filled with LSU fans? You got to love it!) I got to have fish ‘n’ chips–they were marvelous–and then we walked back to the hotel and retired early. He ran me ragged today– lunch in Chinatown, and then we are having dinner with our friend Donna, who is also joining us for Hadestown, which I am very excited to see. I also need to write while I am here–hopefully I’ll be able to get some of that done Friday afternoon; I hate that I wasn’t able to keep my momentum going yesterday and knock out another three thousand words, but it was a day, wasn’t it? I got up at six yesterday morning, headed out to the airport around ten thirty, and then didn’t get to the hotel until six New York time. That’s an awful lot of me being out in public.

I also didn’t sleep great last night–first night in a hotel is always an adjustment; I hope tonight it will be a different story–and then was awakened (not really, I was awake but lying in bed with my eyes closed like I always do when I have insomnia) by a text from That Bitch Ford (Michael Thomas Ford, for those of you who are new; buy his books, they’re terrific) and so I washed my face and brushed my teeth and went down for coffee with him while he ate ($29 eggs!) and then we took the subway to lower Manhattan to walk around and see Chinatown (we’d planned on having lunch there all along, and we did!) and had a lovely time. Lunch was terrific, and it was fun catching up in person. We don’t think we’ve seen each other in person for going on ten years (I don’t think it’s been that long but I am not certain enough to argue the point), which is astonishing. We’re also two of the few from out “time” to still be around and writing all these years later, which feels very strange to me. We did a lot “I wonder whatever happened to–” and “who was that who–” types of conversation starters. Mike is one of the few people who is still a part of my life who knew me before I was published*; we met when he came to New Orleans to sign Alec Baldwin Doesn’t Love Me and Other Trials from My Queer Life, and we’ve kind of been friends ever since then. I know I interviewed him for IMPACT News back when I used to write for the local gay paper (shuttered since about 2002 or 2003, methinks) and since we both have the same horrible sick sense of humor…it was inevitable.

And now I am back in my room, exhausted, but with dinner plans at five with Mike and our friend Donna, and then of course we’re making a 7 pm curtain for the show. I’m not entirely sure what tomorrow holds for me; I think we have a breakfast date but I could be wrong, and I know in the late afternoon I start having plans again–and of course I will be tied up all day Saturday before flying home on Sunday. Thank God Monday is a holiday, so I can recover and rest and write and get things taken care of around the house. I had hoped to spend some time writing today but I am too tired, and I need to rest and relax before we get going for tonight. I’ve not been to a Broadway show in years, so am kind of looking forward to it. I know nothing about this show other than it’s the Orpheus myth (I think), so am really interested in hearing what the score sounds like.

And on that note I am going to lie down for a minute or two before I have to get ready for dinner. Till next time, Constant Reader!

*It’s very weird to me that so few people who knew me before I was published are actively still part of my life; I am still connected with people from past phases of my life but primarily through social media; I don’t interact with them very much outside of social media; and it’s not like I am ghosting the people from my past or anything; it’s just how life evolves. And most of the people we both knew back when we got started on this crazy journey into publishing aren’t around anymore.

Come On

Yesterday was World AIDS Day, something I didn’t mention on yesterday’s blog because well, it was early in the morning and I literally forgot about it until I got to work yesterday morning (I probably should have prepared a post ahead of time to memorialize and commemorate those we lost; next year–I will put it on my calendar so I won’t forget).

To be fair, I was also all aglow from that terrific review Oline Cogdill gave A Streetcar Named Murder (you can still preorder! Release date is 12/6!). And this morning, I am the guest blogger over at The Wickeds, talking about orange cones and a particularly vexing New Orleans problem, the perennial and pesky potholes.

I slept really well last night, not alighting from the arms of Morpheus until seven thirty this morning. I felt absolutely like a lag-a-bed, a lazy swine, for sleeping so late when my eyes opened to see the red digital numbers glowing in the morning light. I’ve been getting up at five or five thirty all week, so was kind of wondering whether or not I’d sleep late this morning. (I did wake up at three, but went back to sleep almost immediately.) Today I am working from home. I do have some errands I must do at some point, and there’s data to enter and so forth, and oddly enough I feel rested this morning. Usually on Fridays I am a bit worn down from the week, low energy and so forth (which makes the data entry perfect as a job duty for the day), but I don’t feel that way this morning. I don’t feel like I can conquer the world, but I do feel like I can get some things accomplished today. The sink is filled with dirty dishes and of course, there’s always laundry (it never ceases to amaze me how much clothing Paul and I can dirty up all week). I was also very tired when I got home from work last night. Paul didn’t come home until after I groggily climbed the stairs around ten to go to bed, so I spent much of the evening with Scooter purring in my lap while I watched some documentaries on Youtube. James Somerton has a great new one about gay body culture and its origins in Nazi Germany (!), and how the ubermensch Nazi culture of the perfect body was brought home by GI’s after the war. It was fascinating–and it’s been something that’s been on my mind a lot lately (well, over the last few years since the pandemic started) as I’ve looked into gay history and have thought about writing historical gay noirs set throughout the twentieth century (Chlorine, Peplum, Obscenity, Indecency). Watching the Somerton documentary reminded me of Michelangelo Signorile’s Life Outside, which spent some time examining gay body culture, and 2001’s The Adonis Complex, which was a look at the development of male body culture that couldn’t be taken seriously as they erased the gay male experience completely (by not mentioning or acknowledging its existence) which completely invalidated almost everything they wrote about in the book; you cannot talk about male physical perfectionism and only talk about straight men. As Somerton points out in his video–being in good physical condition as a male after your teens used to be a tell about not being straight, as I also mentioned recently on here (when I was talking about using pictures other than of shirtless men).

I don’t always agree with Somerton, but I always enjoy his videos. They make me think, even when I agree with him, and I do enjoy hearing different perspectives.

Progress on the book is being made. It’s been slow going this week, but I am hopeful to make all kinds of progress this weekend. I do have some errands that must be done this weekend, not the least of which is making groceries, and of course I’ll have to watch the SEC Championship game since LSU is playing Georgia, but the loss last week took most of the urgency out of this game, so I can just watch and not mind how it turns out. As I said the other day, finishing the regular season at 8-3 with a trip to the conference championship was something I couldn’t have imagined in August or September–so it’s wonderful to see LSU relevant again after the tragedies that were the last two seasons. Who knows what the future may hold for the Tigers? But it’s nice to be competitive again with the big boys. Like I said, last summer I would have never believed LSU would beat Auburn, Florida, and Alabama this season, yet here we are. GEAUX TIGERS!

I need to get my act together today. It’s been nice (seriously) getting up this week when I wake up; I’ve loved having that extra hour (or half hour, depending on which day it was) to get things done before heading for work. And while I was tired in the evenings when I got home, realistically I was able to get some things done in the evening as well. I need to check my to-do list and clean some, as already mentioned; I also have errands to do and I want to get some work on the book done as well as some more Blatant Self-Promotion posts. The book comes out on Tuesday officially, which is terribly exciting.

And on that note, I am heading into the spice mines. Have a lovely Friday, Constant Reader!

Affairs of the Heart

Wednesday morning and the dark is pushing up against my windows again this morning. This weekend is when the time changes, isn’t it, or is it next? No, it’s this one, and that extra hour of sleep is going to fuck with me for awhile, I know. That’s just kind of how things work, isn’t it? I get used to doing something one way and it takes me forever to adjust to that change, so I figure I’ll get used to the time change sometime around the time it changes again. Yay for being old and cranky and crotchety! Heavy heaving sigh. But part of the fun stuff about getting older is becoming more set in your ways, I suppose.

Ever so much fun.

It is funny how things change, isn’t it? The other day I went on Twitter to just waste some time (really, that’s all it is, no matter how much you enjoy interacting with your friends, it’s still a time-wasting hellscape for the most part) and saw that young Kit Conner, who plays Nick on Heartstopper, has come back onto social media–from taking a break–to tweet the following:  Back for a minute,I’m bi. congrats for forcing an 18 year old to out himself. I think some of you missed the point of the show. Bye.

This was followed up with a wave of support and outrage–as it should have been–because what was happening was this young man, who’d previously said in interviews that he was comfortable with his sexuality and fine with it, but preferred not to talk about, was accused of queerbaiting because a picture of him holding hands with someone of the opposite sex had made the rounds. I am not entirely sure what this means, to be honest; but from what I gather it’s a celebrity who “teases” that they may be queer but never comes out and says so in order to gain fans? Other examples given on Twitter were Taylor Swift and Harry Styles. I know there’s a thing about queer roles being played by non-queer actors, and queer actors not getting opportunities because straight actors are getting those roles (and being praised and getting award recognition for their “bravery”–although no one is ever considered brave for playing a serial killer or a mass murderer or a Nazi). But the thing is we don’t know how everyone identifies–that’s just the truth–and is it really any of our business? I have long deplored the culture where fans are hungry and desperate (thirsty, is the term now, I believe) to know everything about their favorite celebrities, but I don’t really care who Taylor Swift is sleeping with, or which Kardashian is now involved with what professional athlete/actor/model. I get curiosity–and of course we queers have been guilty of speculating about the sexual preferences of celebrities, primarily out of a hunger for visibility.. But we older queers need to remember that the world has changed–partly because of all the work we did being visible and so forth–and while speculating isn’t particularly harmful, this whole queerbaiting thing just strikes me as particularly nasty–especially when it’s applied to a person. A person can’t queerbait–unless they are actually pretending to be queer, for whatever reason, for financial or career gain, when they actually are not–queerbait is a term used primarily for movies and television shows that promise queer content to get us to buy tickets or tune in to watch, but don’t deliver. Like oh look there’s a queer character in Star Wars at last! Only to have it be a same-sex kiss between two characters that aren’t even in the main cast, flashed on screen for maybe two seconds. Disney is notorious for doing this. So, going after an eighteen-year-old for queerbaiting is absurd on its face, and the entire point of the show Heartstopper was, in fact, that it’s okay to be confused and not understand everything immediately, but to figure it out for yourself in your own time.

Queerbaiting also consists of pretending to be queer to give your writing about queer people a false authenticity, but that’s a subject for another time. I think it’s great we have reached a place in our culture and society that more and more celebrities are feeling comfortable enough to come out publicly, but we really need to stop speculating about people’s private lives and give them the room to figure it out for themselves. Some may never be comfortable coming out publicly, and that’s okay too. In the early days of the queer equality movement, we urged everyone to come out–power and safety in numbers, and the more visibility we had the more people would stop seeing us a “threat” of some sort. But times change, and they have. And while I certainly hope that everyone has the courage and the ability to eventually live their authentic lives they want they want to, I also understand that some may never do so. It’s a process, and it’s different for everyone.

And shouldn’t everyone be free to come out on their own timeline of comfort?

I had insomnia again last night. I was exhausted after I wrote my chapter last night–I was exhausted when I got home from work. honestly–and eventually went to bed early, around nine. Scooter woke me by caterwauling for no apparent reason right around eleven thirty–woke me from a deep sleep, I might add–and I was never able to fall back asleep. I did get my chapter written, despite being so tired, and after I did that I collapsed into my easy chair for a while. I tried to read to no avail, tried to find something, anything, to watch, and finally as I was dozing off in the chair decided it wouldn’t hurt to go to bed early. The chapter isn’t very good, either–none of this draft is good, to be honest–and last night the stress and anxiety about everything I have to do finally built to a point where it peaked, I had a bit of a meltdown, and I snapped back into normalcy, which I hope will last through the day. It has been building for quite some time now–I found myself getting angry really quickly yesterday and over nothing, really, and that’s a sign–but unfortunately there’s no way around it other than letting it build till it boils over and I get the pressure release and I am fine again. I think last night writing the chapter and knowing it was terrible and knowing I am behind and I have so much left to do and then it’s going to take such a massive overhaul to rework it all into something decent that I just started freaking about everything I have to get done and so I had my little meltdown and hopefully, that pressure won’t start building again for a while at any rate.

And on that note, I am heading into the spice mines. Have a lovely Wednesday, Constant Reader.

Do You Know

Tuesday and all is well again this morning–at least so far.

Yesterday was very productive. I got some day job things taken care of that needed taking care of, I worked on the book and wrote a chapter, and I managed to get some emails cleaned out of my inbox. I did start feeling a bit fatigued in the later afternoon, so decided to try to take it easy once I got home from the office but managed to plant my ass in my desk chair and get the fucking chapter written. I also managed to read three short stories by Paul Tremblay from his collection Growing Things over the weekend–he’s such a good writer, seriously, you should be reading him–which was nice, and perfect reading for Halloween times.

I had insomnia again last night–which I can’t help but wonder wasn’t tied to the cappuccino I made yesterday morning, but that’s nonsense; I’ve had cappuccinos in the morning and slept well that night, so I don’t know. I guess I was just due for another night of it at some point, and last night just happened to be the lucky night. I don’t feel physically or mentally fatigued this morning, but then again you never know. I have to work in clinic today, face to face with people, and that is usually draining on several levels. Hopefully when I get home tonight I’ll have the energy to write more on the book. But like I said, so far so good this morning. I feel physically rested, at any rate, or no more tired and fatigued than usual when I get up, at any rate.

I can’t believe it’s November already, and there are only two months left in 2022. I am going to Kentucky for Thanksgiving, so I have a lot to get done this month before I leave–I also have to have the heater in my car looked at, because it no longer blows warm air and I cannot drive up there without a working heater in the car because cold–and who knows how much that is going to cost me? Yay. You got to love these out of nowhere extra expenses–I just got a raise so of course now instead of paying down debt I’ll have to add some more, hurray. But it’s necessary, and of course the car is now at that age–almost six–where things might start to go a little wrong here and there. I’ve already had to replace the battery, and I also need a new windshield wiper for the back window.

The good news is I started solving some issues within the book last night after I gave in to Scooter’s demands for a lap to sleep in (he never stays there for longer than half an hour, which makes it even more frustrating to give in to him; he sleeps in my lap long enough to make me lethargic and remove the desire to do anything, which can be a problem. I also did some dishes and am trying to stay on top of the kitchen; I had to stop to make groceries last night on the way home (out of bread, among other things) and will have to again tonight–the store in the CBD didn’t have everything I needed, which was extremely irritating–but I have to go uptown and get the mail after work anyway. I’m still hoping my box o’books of A Streetcar Named Murder are going to arrive soon–I know it seems early since the pub date isn’t until 12/6, but they told me they’d come before the end of the month and….yesterday was the end of the month, and I am nothing if not a completely literal person.

So, anyway, as I was saying, I started solving some issues within the book last night as Scooter purred and slept in my lap and I let my playlist of music videos run on the television, and for the first time in a while I am starting to feel like this book will not be a complete disaster and may actually turn out to be fairly decent. One never knows, does one? And no matter how many books you’ve written in your career, you always fear that somehow the ability to do this is magically going to disappear from your brain overnight, and everything is going to blow up in your face. I literally was considering that very thing this past weekend, thinking that what I really needed to do was just tear up the contract and asked to be released from it and just hibernate in the apartment for a few months. But that was probably chemical–there are so many chemical issues in my brain–and an unconscious or subconscious reaction to Paul not being home, which probably depressed me and imbalanced the delicate balance of everything in my brain, which is why I wasn’t able to get very much done over the weekend the way I had hoped and planned to. Paul won’t get home until Saturday evening, and while yes, this Saturday is the double-header of Georgia-Tennessee followed by LSU-Alabama, I should be able to get up in the morning and get things done before it’s time to start watching the games–and of course, I can always just have the game on while I clean and so forth. Heavy heaving sigh.

And on that note, I am heading into the spice mines for the morning. Have a great day, Constant Reader and I will check in with you again tomorrow morning, as always.

Isn’t It Midnight

Well, I jinxed myself by saying yesterday–either here or to someone at the office–that I hadn’t had insomnia for a long time. So, of course last night it returned with a vengeance. I stayed in bed, of course, drifting in and out of mild, light sleep most of the night, which wasn’t very much fun. I feel rested this morning, but I also felt rested yesterday and was really tired by the time the afternoon rolled around. I did get a lot of work done, too, which was super-great. I wrote a chapter of the book (a terrible one, but a chapter was written nonetheless) so progress was made–and the story is beginning to coalesce inside my head right now, which is also a very good thing. I am thinking I can get this draft finished by the end of the month and then spend November cleaning it the fuck up.

We continued watching A Friend of the Family last night, and yikes, what a situation this family found itself in. It’s very easy to judge them with the hindsight of the twenty-first century behind our reasoning, but the 1970’s were a vastly different time. In a small city like Pocatello and in a small community like the Mormon Church of the area–you’d never think you’d meet a sociopath in that environment, nor would you think about perverts or pedophilia or sociopathy in someone you’d met that way. And you never want to believe that your child was molested; so naturally in that time you would seize on any excuse to say that wasn’t the case. We only have one episode left, so I am curious to see how it all turns out. I don’t think they ever got any justice (which seems to be a rare thing indeed), and the fact that the man claimed he had the parents’ permission to take the girl to Mexico–where he married her, bigamously–even though the parents said it was a lie and the police basically took his side, is mind-boggling to me. (An adult can no longer take a minor out of the country without documentation, usually notarized, from the parents. A single parent taking a minor out of the country has to have documentation stating that the other parent is aware and grants permission; this was drilled into us at the airline…)

I also cannot imagine the guilt the parents lived with for the rest of their lives, either. Yet another reason I am glad to not be a parent, seriously. Never had any desire, and don’t miss it in the least.

It rained overnight, apparently, which could explain the insomnia; barometric pressure changes, particularly dramatic ones, can affect my sinuses and thus my sleep. My sinuses feel fine, but I also took a Claritin yesterday so that could be the answer. It’s feeling very muggy this morning, which is okay as our office is always super-cold in one area while temperate in another. I may wear a sweatshirt under my work T-shirt. (Is this stuff as fascinating to you as it is to me?)

Probably, since I’m boring myself I can’t imagine that I am fascinating or interesting you, Constant Reader.

I have errands to run on my way home. I am getting antsy, because I am expecting the finished box o’books for A Streetcar Named Murder to arrive at any time (probably will not come until November because I want them to come now, right?) and I am also expecting to get a contributor copy for an anthology I sold a story to–still waiting to get paid as well–so I actually have a vested interest in going to get the mail. Again, probably none of this will come until next month, but I am getting antsy and I am always impatient; something that can inevitably always be counted on is my impatience. I haven’t had a hardcover release in eighteen years or so, so am really looking forward to seeing how beautiful the finished book looks. I love the cover, and the entire thing has been an absolute pleasure every step of the way once the book was finished, you know? I hope you’ve preordered. I am planning on turning this blog into a heavy promotion site soon for the book as well; I’m not really sure what I am doing so bear with me. I’m not exactly sure how to go about doing promotional entries here, either, but hey–it’s something new and different and why shouldn’t I talk about my book here, trying to get people interested enough to read it?

I also came to a hilarious realization yesterday on the current book as I was writing it, and thinking to myself, can you really bring this character back from Scotty’s past when you’ve already mentioned him earlier in the plot? Isn’t that kind of, I don’t know, contrived? And then I started laughing because I had completely forgotten what I was doing with this Scotty book–that no one will probably notice, as no one seems to ever notice what I am doing with my books, but that’s okay; I know and that’s all that matters, right? Anyway, I remembered what the entire point of writing the book was yesterday and now that I’ve actually remembered what I was doing–an homage to Nancy Drew/The Hardy Boys style of crime novels–of course this all will make sense. Besides, the point of the Scotty series is their utter preposterousness; it’s not reality and it doesn’t claim to be; they never have. I also kind of worried because of some similarities to Streetcar–namely, an old family feud no one remembers the root cause behind–but then I laughed at myself yet again. I’ve written over forty books and over fifty short stories at this point in my life; inevitably I am going to repeat plot points and themes.

And on that note, I am heading into the spice mines. Have a lovely day, Constant Reader.

Wish You Were Here

Friday Eve! I had a touch of insomnia again last night, but I feel okay this morning. I got very tired yesterday in the afternoon, but survived the day but was very drained when I got home. I did do a load of dishes and a load of laundry, though, so there was some success to be had on the home front–glad the sink has been mostly emptied, for one thing–and tonight on the way home I’ll have to stop and make some groceries as we’re out of a few things, but I am just glad that I’ve made it through a relatively productive week here at the Lost Apartment. I’m adjusting to my new job responsibilities as I learn them, which is always nice (nothing too hard or stressful, which is cool, and I like learning how to do new things) and I suppose I should earn the raise I got.

I was too tired to write last night (ugh, the same old refrain, right?) but I did spend some time thinking about the book and this hellish transition chapter I’m stuck on. I really need to stop second-guessing myself, keep moving, and worry about it all later. A short story deadline looms, but I don’t think I am going to have either the time or the inclination to go ahead and try to get something done and turned in on time. I have a story but it needs revision and I am not exactly sure how to solve what the problem in the story actually is; and I really don’t want to turn in something inferior.

I was also thinking last night about, well, my writing career. It’s hard to believe I’ve been a published author now for almost one third of my life, which is quite a long time to be doing this. I was also thinking about my work and how often I am dissatisfied with my own work; I also kind of laughed at myself because I often express that feeling here and on social media–which is precisely the wrong thing to do when it comes to marketing yourself: if the author isn’t satisfied with his own work, why should I read it? I really am terrible at this part of being a writer. But I have never been comfortable praising myself–which is why, I think, I’ve never gotten far with day jobs; I don’t push myself forward because I was raised to believe that you don’t praise yourself–that’s for others to do, and if you do a great job or do something good, other people will notice and if they don’t, doing a great job or something good should be reward in and of itself.

That’s kind of fucked up, actually, now that I put it into writing.

But on the other hand I wouldn’t be me if I didn’t reread something I’ve written and think, oh you should have done this or you could have done this part better or ouch that’s a clumsy sentence/paragraph/transition. I am kind of a perfectionist in some ways; I always think i could have done something better–and that’s not just restricted to the authorial part of my life, either. There are situations I think I could have handled better in the past, but I also tend to look at those experiences as growth opportunities? And God knows I could be a better housekeeper, and don’t even get me started on my electronic files on my back-up hard drive (which I really need to back up again). But is all this self-criticism necessary? I don’t know.

I’m very proud of all of my work; I take all of it–erotica, crime, horror, romance, whatever–seriously and I approach every manuscript with the mentality that I am going to do my best with it. I also think that I need to be easier on myself and less critical of my earlier stuff; the truth is I like to think that I continue to evolve and grow and get better at my craft so yes, if I were to write Murder in the Rue Dauphine or Bourbon Street Blues they would be different books, for sure, but that’s true of every author. Would they be better? No, but they would be different because I am not only a different writer now but a different person. New Orleans is also a different city now than it was when I was writing those books, so it wouldn’t be possible to write those same books the same way today. I mean, Scotty’s rent in the French Quarter was $400 a month back when I wrote Bourbon Street Blues! And so many things I used to write about that aren’t there anymore–Kaldi’s Coffee Museum on Decatur Street; Matassas’ Market on Dauphine; Tujague’s has even moved from where it was for decades, and of course even the sleazy dive bar Rawhide is getting a facelift and a makeover. But that also makes those older books kind of a New Orleans as it was time capsule, which is also really lovely.

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

Bombay Sapphires

Friday! This morning I am heading into the office for a department meeting and potentially the monkeypox training; it was never officially confirmed, but I think we are going forward with it today. I will let you know tomorrow, Constant Reader, one way or the other. This week kind of went by quickly; I think that’s the thing with being out of the office on Mondays instead of Fridays, which I had gotten very used to: I start my in-the-office week on Tuesday so the week is already on its way. (And yes, while I do work when I am home on Mondays, but not having to come into the office makes it seem like not-work, if that makes sense? I actually get a lot more done when I work at home than I do when I am in the officer; fewer distractions, for one thing) I am kind of looking forward to the weekend, to be honest. I should have all my errands finished today, so there will be no need for me to leave the house (or use the car) this weekend, and I am hoping to make it to the gym tomorrow to get back on track with my working out and stretching again. I don’t think I will ever get my freakish flexibility back again, nor do I think I will ever lean down to my 2007 “fighting weight” body again, but I know it will make me feel better over all, and that’s the most important thing–along with helping me get to sleep every night. Insomnia hasn’t reared its ugly head much over the past few months, but…it’s still there, waiting to fuck me over at the slightest notice.

Bastards.

I am really surprised no one ever came up with a super-villain named INSOMNIA–looking at you, Marvel and DC! Imagine someone with the ability to not only keep you from sleeping, but can make you feel like you haven’t slept in weeks. I just shivered thinking about it.

The horror of it all.

I hope to finish reading Curtis Ippolito’s book this weekend, and move on to Gabino Iglesias’ new one, The Devil Takes You Home. I love Gabino’s voice, and his writing, and I already looked at the first page of this one and was kind of awed by it–when the first page sucks you AND blows you away, you know you’re in for a good time and experience–which is delightful. Gabino is one of the good guys, and it has done my soul such good seeing so many marvelous and wonderful people have their careers take off into the stratosphere. It’s always nice when good things happen to good people, you know? It always pleases me. I have ambitious plans for this weekend, as I always do; I want to get a lot of writing done–I kind of want to go over “The Sound of Snow Falling” once more and get it sent out for submission (I wrote it for Land of 10000 Thrills, but decided against submitting it in the end). I think it’s the only other story I have on hand that is remotely close to being ready to be sent out, so another reread is definitely in order for it. I think I’m going to send it to Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine, primarily because it’s been quite some time since I’ve published there (and it’s always nice to sell them another story); I still want to get a story into Alfred Hitchcock’s Mystery Magazine. So many places I want to get published!

I slept really well last night, which feels quite marvelous today. We watched the season three finale of Control Z last night, and I think it was actually the series finale–it had a very interesting ending, certainly not the one we were led to believe we were going to get, which is always courageous and I applaud the writers for doing something different and going against when that audience had kind of been led to expect would happen at the end. I’ve done that with a couple of my books–the unexpected ending the reader wasn’t led to believe would happen–and I am never quite sure how that works with the readers. I always appreciate a surprise at the end, but I don’t think everyone does (go on Twitter and see what people say about romances that don’t have Happily Ever After endings). As Constant Reader might recall, I’ve been thinking about writing a romance novel–I never really have written one, and I don’t know, I think I could probably write a good one, but will never know unless I try. I already have a title and a main character and an opening scene, so who knows? Maybe A Better Man will get written next year. Stranger things have happened, after all. Maybe one of the things I will do this weekend is try to come up with a writing schedule for the rest of this year and next.

Hmmm.

And on that note, I am heading into the spice mines. Happy Friday to all, and I will chat at you again tomorrow morning.