jackson square jazz – Page 4 – Queer and Loathing in America

Shame

I have really come to love Bouchercon, and it’s always a highlight of my year.

Things have seriously changed for the better.

*Queer Crime Writers after a dinner out in San Diego, with Marco’s lovely husband Mark Gutkowski*

Bouchercon last week was a marvelous, marvelous experience. I had such an amazing time, saw some people I’ve not seen in quite some time (and quickly remembered why I love them so much), and stayed up way later every night than I should have–one of my many neuroses is FOMO, of course; I still regret not going to Dallas in 2019–but I laughed a lot, had some great panels, and made some new friends, too. I ate great meals, had some marvelous cocktails, and I really liked the hotel (once I figured out the shortcuts to the meeting spaces). It also made me think about my own history with the event, how things have changed for the better, and how I hope it keeps changing for the better. There were so few of us queer writers who used to go back in the day; now we have enough of us to have a happy hour where we get together and drink and chat about writing and the business and oh, how we all laugh. It’s wonderful.

When I first got started in this business, publishing was different. I had to explain this recently to someone I am hiring to do the ebook for Jackson Square Jazz for me; why I didn’t have a pdf file, because back then there were no ebooks and you got your page proofs in the mail, as well as your marked up manuscript for the editing process. So all I have on hand is the unedited version of the book I turned in. But what also was nice back then was there was a support system for queer writers that we no longer have–there were queer newspapers, queer magazines, and queer bookstores. We had a queer book of the month club–Insightoutbooks–and their influence in shaping and developing my career cannot be underestimated. After Hurricane Katrina and the six months spent touring for Mardi Gras Mambo, I kind of withdrew back into myself. I don’t remember much of 2006-2008, to be perfectly honest; I just know that I went back to work full time in 2008 and after adjusting my writing/editing schedule to that, it was around 2009 or 2010 that I resurfaced and started thinking about promotion and marketing again.

And what I found was that during those lost years (I call it the Hibernation) everything had changed. The queer newspapers and bookstores were mostly gone. ISO shut down. And I realized, with a sinking heart, that I was going to have to start going to mainstream conferences to promote myself. After working so hard in the mid to late 1990’s ensuring I could exist in almost entirely queer or queer-friendly places, I found myself having to essentially start over. Queer writers never mattered to the mainstream crime organizations and conferences, and I braced myself, knowing I was going to encounter homophobia yet again.

It didn’t take very long–although in retrospect, I’m actually surprised it took as long as it did.

I joined Mystery Writers of America, and later, Sisters in Crime. I also went to Bouchercon in Indianapolis and San Francisco. I didn’t know more than a handful of people and tended to glom onto the people I did know (sorry about that, guys; social interactions at events where I don’t know anyone ramps up my anxiety, so I glom onto the people I know). Indianapolis I wasn’t in the host hotel, I was across the street–and it was cold. It was the weekend of the Ohio State-Purdue game, I can remember that because my hotel was full of OSU fans, so I found myself mostly hanging out in my hotel room and reading, while braving the cold to go across the street for my panels and events. It was nice, and decided to go to San Francisco for it the next year. There I was in the host hotel and realized oh you really need to stay in the host hotel in the future, because it made everything easier. I was starstruck most of that weekend–I rode in the elevator with S. J. Rozan once and another time with Laurie R. King, which was incredible. I only had one panel, at 4 pm on Friday afternoon that no one came to, but I had a really good time—and even decided to put together a bid to host it in New Orleans (and that is a whole other story), before yet another person decided that it was time for a Bouchercon programmer to put the fag back in his place, letting me know that I and my books weren’t important enough (the exact wording was “surely you have to understand that someone who’s edited a couple of anthologies doesn’t really deserve to be on panels”–despite the fact that my tenth novel had just been released…and of course, the greatest irony of this was that I went on to edit three of their anthologies) to grace any panel, and that any panel I’d been given in the previous two years should be considered a gift.

Should be considered a gift.

A fucking GIFT.

(For the record, Paul is an event planner by trade. He is executive director of both the Tennessee Williams/New Orleans Literary Festival as well as Saints & Sinner, a queer litfest. Just to be certain I wasn’t overreacting and being a diva-bitch, I let him read the email. His response? “If one of my staff, interns or volunteers wrote an email like that to an attending author I would fire them on the spot.” And before anyone starts up with the “programming a Bouchercon is hard” I will remind you that Margery Flax and I wrote over one half of the program for Dallas in three fucking days and contacted everyone with their assignments and then reorganized and redid the program to accommodate schedules and wrong panel assignments for about two weeks before it was done–with the local chair constantly throwing things at us that made us start pulling threads and weaving it back together again….nothing like “oh, sorry, I forgot that I promised these people a panel for this” after you’ve redone it for the fourth time. That happened a lot. And the entire time, we were incredibly polite and friendly and did whatever we could to accommodate people; apologizing and fixing it repeatedly. NOT ONE PERSON RECEIVED A FUCKING EMAIL TELLING THEM TO CONSIDER ANY PANEL THEY GOT AS A GIFT.

But then, I’m not an unprofessional piece of shit whose pathetic ego sees programming as power to abuse, either.

I wasn’t saying (and was very respectful) oh I am such a big deal how could you not give me an assignment, all I asked was hey, I know how hard your job is, but I don’t understand how you get on a panel and what can I do differently in the future to get one? What am I doing wrong? I approached them with kindness and respect for the work they were doing and got bitch-slapped, demeaned, and insulted in response. No author who is paying their own way to a conference and essentially providing the event with free entertainment for its audience should ever be treated so contemptuously by event organizers, period. The fact that when I expressed these concerns to the national board all I got back was mealy-mouthed excuses and “we’re sorry you’re offended” told me everything I needed to know about the organization and its board; the way they were treating me about the New Orleans bid (I had planned on having Susan Larsen–former chair of the National Books Critic Circle, chair of the Pulitzer Prize for fiction twice, long time programmer for the TW Fest and a nationally respected book reviewer–help out along with Pat Brady, long time publications chair of the Historic New Orleans Collection, huge mystery fan, and also a long time programmer for TWFest only to be told their vast knowledge and experience wasn’t “good enough” and I needed to get the homophobic trash who told me I was nothing to program New Orleans–yeah, like that was ever going to happen) was also egregiously horrible, condescending, insulting, and unprofessional.

Needless to say I cancelled my trip to St. Louis and never considered attending Cleveland; I tend to not go where I am not welcome. I am not taking my hard-earned money from my “nothing career” and giving it to a homophobic organization, where I then get to beg for scraps and get treated like shit. I have better ways to spend my money, thank you. (And yes, I know who the programmers were and yes, I will carry that grudge to the grave.)

I withdrew my bid to host for New Orleans, and I washed my hands of the mainstream mystery community. Who needs it? They were never going to accept me or my work, they were never going to read my work, they didn’t give a shit about me, and it was pretty clear they never would. I was kind of at sea for a few years, there. There were no more queer newspapers, no more queer bookstores, no more gay Insightoutbooks.com book club, nothing. Outside of the TWFest and Saints & Sinners, I had no conference outlets to promote myself and my work. The mainstream mystery world clearly wanted no part of me, so what was I supposed to do? So, I just kept writing. I operated my social media pages as a promotional outlet for my work, and I kept writing this blog. I did finally return to Bouchercon when it went to Albany; friends convinced me to go, and one powerful friend requested me for a panel she assembled–and it came through. Having friends made a huge difference, really, and through my friends I met and made more friends, and Bouchercon slowly became a must-go event for me every year…eventually reaching the point where I never had to be concerned about getting on a panel, while at the same time no longer caring whether I did or not. It became more about seeing my friends and being around other writers than a work/promotional thing for me. Ironically, once I no longer cared or worried so much about being on things…I started getting put on more and more things, with bigger and increasingly more important co-panelists (I still can’t get over the fact that I was on a panel with ATTICA LOCKE in Minneapolis. I was too nervous to say anything to her; I spent that entire panel looking at my co-panelists and listening to them speak and wondering why the fuck I was on that panel).

And now, of course, we have a group: the Queer Crime Writers, and a core group of us have been showing up together at conferences ever since we bonded at Left Coast last year (and bonded even more with more of us at Bouchercon Minneapolis last year): John Copenhaver, Marco Carocari, Kelly J. Ford, and Robyn Gigl–who’ve all become very dear to me over the last year or so. Teresa Cain/Carsen Taite joined us in San Diego, and became my con-wife; what a great time we had!

And somehow, I am getting nominated for mainstream awards, an outcome I could have never predicted. I won the Anthony for Best Anthology for editing Blood on the Bayou, and was nominated for Best Short Story at the Dallas event for “Cold Beer No Flies” (I lost to S. A. Cosby, no disgrace there). Last year Bury Me in Shadows was nominated for Best Paperback Original (losing to Jess Lourey) and Best Children’s/Young Adult (losing to Alan Orloff); neither of those losses were devastating because Jess and Alan are also friends of mine, and I couldn’t have been happier for them both. This year I had three nominations in three categories for three different books–Best Anthology for Land of 10000 Thrills (losing to S. J. Rozan for MWA’s Crime Hits Home); Best Children’s/Young Adult (losing to Nancy Springer for the latest Enola Holmes, hello, no disgrace there); and Best Humorous for A Streetcar Named Murder (losing to Catriona McPherson for Scot in a Trap)–again, with the exception of Springer, I lost to very talented friends I like very much (I’ve not met Springer). That’s seven Anthony nominations in total, to go along with the Macavity, the Agatha, the Lefty, and the Shirley Jackson nominations. Not bad for a queer writer, wouldn’t you say? Ten mainstream award nominations? I certainly never would have dreamed all those years ago when I was told “any panel you get should be considered a gift” by Bouchercon programming.

That doesn’t mean the community is free from homophobia; it’s still there. I have mentioned before the mainstream cisgender male author who is clearly afraid to acknowledge my existence and always beats a hasty retreat whenever I walk up; I find his homophobia amusing. You’re not hurting me, bro, because I don’t want to know you, either. It doesn’t mean that I can’t be sitting in a booth in the hotel bar with a bunch of friends only to have a straight man look at me, smirk and say “faggy” in a sentence, as though daring me to call his ass out because he’s so much more important than I am; no worries, asshole, I don’t even have to repeat the story to anyone because since then you’ve shown all the big names you’re buddies with that you’re actually a piece of shit, and yes, I’ve watched it all with the same fucking smirk you had on your face when you thought you’d pull out your micro-penis and slap it down on the booth table in Toronto, and when I hear stories about you, I am delighted to pull out “Well, I’ve known he was trash since he said faggy in front of me, looking me in the face and smirking as he said it”.

Assholes will always out themselves, at least in my experience–and I’m very patient. I store the receipts and pull them out to corroborate horrific behavior when the timing is right.

I’ll save the racism, sexual harassment, and homophobia I faced in Albuquerque at Left Coast for another time.

I’m very pleased with the progress that has been made in our community over the last five or six years–I mean, the Rainbow Diversity panel about queer crime writing in Toronto was packed, when such panels in the past only drew maybe four or five audience members. Codes of conduct have been implemented to protect attendees from sexual harassment and pervy conduct, as well as racism and homophobia.

Progress is often slow, and it is easy to get impatient. I don’t know if my involvement with Bouchercon has made things better for queer writers there, but I do know the award nominations show other queer writers that such things are possible for them. Nothing says you’re welcome here than seeing members of your community nominated for the awards. The more of us that attend also means that more of us will get nominated, be on panels, and be able to talk about our work to readers who might open their minds and read our books. Being visible at these events is crucial and important.

And like water wearing down a stone, we have to keep relentlessly pushing.

(John, Marco, Kelly, and Rob Osler have all been nominated for mainstream awards over the last year, along with me. Edwin Hill and PJ Vernon have also been recognized for their brilliant work, too. This is so wonderful to see–I’d be delighted even if I weren’t with them in this grouping. And if you’ve not read any of us, there’s not a single person I’ve mentioned by name you can go wrong with. It’s also exciting seeing the new queer talent rising in writers like Margot Douaihy.)

I was torn about going to Nashville next year; their anti-trans and anti-queer laws have me not really wanting to spend my queer money there. But the point was made that going and being very present was an act of defiance…and Lord knows I love defying homophobes, so I guess I am probably going to go. I can visit Dad either before or after, so it actually makes sense for me to go. I’ve decided to write a very gay story to submit to their anthology (which means I need to get back to work on it), and so yeah…I think defiance is the way to go.

Plus….I love my Queer Crime Writers. I can’t imagine not being around them next year, and I would absolutely go nuts from FOMO.

So, in closing, thank you, Queer Crime Writers. I love you all, and thank you for letting me into your group. Let’s keep making a difference, shall we?

Old Man River

And somehow, almost twenty-one years have passed since Scotty Bradley burst forth into the world with Bourbon Street Blues, one of what I hoped was the most unconventional and original amateur sleuths in the history of crime fiction. This is neither the time nor the place to again tell the story of how I created him, or how what was supposed to be a one-off stand alone book became a series spread out over twenty years (!!!); I’ve told those stories endlessly over the last twenty years both here and on panels. But Scotty remains very precious to me all these years later, and I still care about getting him and his life right on the page. I don’t torture him or make his life as miserable as I do Chanse’s (poor, poor Chanse), but he has his own problems and issues that he has to face–but his endless optimism and willingness to face things head on and deal with them, rolling with the punches and always getting back up, has never once wavered in all the years I’ve been writing him. I love him, his family–even the stuffy Bradley side; I love that the unconventional family their son married into pushes every single one of their buttons–and I love his New Orleans.

The other night I was scrolling through Youtube and, just for the hell of it, searched for a song that I’ve been trying to find a digital copy of for my Spotify or Apple Music accounts; Erin Hamilton (Carol Burnett’s daughter) remade Cheap Trick’s “The Flame” as a dance song (she also did the same with that old 1970s classic, “Dream Weaver” and I prefer her versions to the originals), and I love the extended remix. I found the video on Youtube and as I listened to it, it brought back a lot of memories of going out to the gay bars, hitting the dance floor and staying out there all night, getting caught up in the music and just having a great time. I think this song predated the turn of the century, so it’s a late 90’s recording…anyway, it really made me think, put me back into a Scotty place in my mind, and as I listened, sang along, and bopped my head, the next Scotty book started forming in my head….and I realized that’s been part of the disconnection I felt writing the last few Scotty books; sure, I could and can still write him, and sure, I could get back into his head space, but it was much harder for me to do than it used to be. I thought it might be because I don’t go to the Quarter at all anymore, or that I don’t spend any time in gay bars anymore; that I don’t know what it’s like to be a gay man in his forties (almost fifties) today–my own memories are of a completely different world than the one we live in now. But now I know what I was doing wrong–I was listening to the wrong kind of music while writing him. If I want to ease back into Scotty’s mind and world, I need to listen to dance music I used to hear in the gay bars.

And can I say that it’s a real shame that it’s so hard to track down old gay bar dance remixes?

Knowing this means I’ll probably keep going with Scotty for a while longer, at any rate. I love him, I love the character, and I know I’ve been avoiding dealing with some things in that series that will eventually have to be addressed…but it’s absolutely lovely to know that I can slip back easily into his mind-space just by listening to great old gay dance remixes.

“I think we should turn it into a home gym,” I said into the gloom. “I mean, wouldn’t it be great to just have to go downstairs to work out? And we can put in a sauna and a steam room. What do you think, guys?”

It was the Monday night after Mother’s Day, and the termites were swarming.

That was why we were sitting around the living room in the dark. The only illumination in the entire building came from two blasphemy candles, flickering in the center of the coffee table. Modeled after Catholic prayer candles, one had a picture of Drew Brees in his Saints jersey with a halo and heavenly light shining on his head with the words Pray to Breesus around the base. The other was St. Chris Owens of Bourbon Street.

So, yeah—blasphemy candles. They’re very popular here.

Yet even the scant pale light from the teardrop shaped flames was enough to draw an occasional scout termite from the gloom. We wouldn’t see it until it landed on the glass lip of one of the candles, before dive-bombing into the flame. There would be a brief sizzling sound, and then the yellow flame flickered and turning briefly reddish as the termite immolated. Once it was consumed, the flame would be steady and yellow again.

The swarming rarely lasted more than an hour, but that hour seemed to last an eternity.

Termites have always been the bane of New Orleans’s existence. The domestic kind were bad enough. Houses and buildings were tented to get rid of infestations, the bright yellow and red stripes announcing to the world that a termite Armageddon was happening inside. The city’s original termite problem had grown exponentially worse since the particularly vicious Formosan variety had hitched a ride on a freighter to the fertile feeding grounds of our old, mostly wooden city shortly after World War II. The dampness of our climate must have made them feel like they’d arrived at termite Disney World. The little fuckers love wet wood, so the entire city was an all-you-can-eat buffet. They’d killed live oaks that had survived hurricanes, destroyed historic homes, and I’d heard that they could even chew through brick and mortar.

Maybe that was an urban legend, but it wasn’t one I was interested in proving.

Formosan termites swarmed.

The first rule of surviving Formosan termite season was speed. Every source of light had to be turned off the moment you spotted the first scout. They’re drawn to the light, like moths, but unlike moths, they’re drawn to the light in the hundreds of thousands, turning your home into a scene from Cecil B. DeMille’s ultimate cheesefest The Ten Commandments. The big streetlamps along Decatur Street outside drew the swarms, horrifying clouds of little monsters flying around, frantically trying to mate while shedding wings like revoltingly nasty snowflakes.

It is incredibly hard for me to believe that I have written seventeen or so books and countless short stories set in New Orleans and never have once addressed the swarms of Formosan termites we live through every spring. They return after Mother’s Day and haunt us in the evenings, usually between eight and nine pm, until Memorial Day, give or take. They aren’t a nightly occurrence, thank the heavens, but they are usually at their worst on Mondays and Tuesdays. No one had warned Paul and I about them, so the first time we were swarmed we didn’t know what to do. Remembering that horror from the old apartment on Camp Street (we had a massive security light attached to the house right outside our living room, so any light at all inside would draw clouds and clouds of them inside), how was it possible I had never written about the Formosan termite swarms? And with Scotty having bought the building on Decatur Street from Millie and Velma–who I sent into retirement along the Gulf Coast of Florida–and learning about the responsibilities and drawbacks to being a New Orleans home-owner, as well as trying to figure out how to redesign the interior for more functionality as a single-family dwelling? Of course, the question of what to do with the empty retail space on the first floor would be an issue; I wouldn’t want a living space right on the sidewalk of Decatur Street at any time of day or night or month or year. I also wouldn’t want to deal with renters, either, and thus neither would Scotty. But the space can’t just be left vacant, either. So, I thought it would be a great way to open the book with them sitting out the swarms in the dark, with a couple of candles lit, talking about the renovation plans?

After I finished writing Royal Street Reveillon, I was pretty damned pleased with myself. I thought it was perhaps the best Scotty book of the entire series, and reflected my growth as a writer along with Scotty’s growth and development as a character. When I finished it, I had the thought I always have whenever I finish writing a series book: maybe that should be the last one. But I immediately dismissed that thought from my head; I had left something in the personal story of Scotty and the boys hanging with a bit of a cliffhanger, so I knew there had to be one more book at least to tie off that loose end. I was also thinking about a local-ish political scandal of the last decade–the usual, a conservative Christian pro-family politician outed for having an inappropriate relationship with a teenager (who was over seventeen, the age of consent for boys in Louisiana), and a political powerhouse dynasty that had ruled a near-ish parish for generations was dead in the water. I had been thinking a lot also about taking Scotty and the boys outside of New Orleans and the safety of Orleans Parish for an adventure; as my knowledge of Louisiana grew exponentially along with my study of the state’s history, I really wanted to set a book in a part of Louisiana I could fictionalize and have some fun with. I had already created a couple of fictional parishes and towns in previous work; The Orion Mask particularly was set in fictional Redemption Parish–but Redemption wouldn’t work for this one, so I needed another one.

While I was thinking this through, I remembered that two Nancy Drew mysteries were connected to New Orleans–she was only here for a couple of chapters of The Ghost of Blackwood Hall, but most of The Haunted Showboat was set here, or just outside of the metropolitan area (a quick reread showed that “Carolyn Keene’s” Louisiana and New Orleans bore no resemblance whatsoever to the reality…but I knew I had a Nancy Drew Easter egg in Bury Me in Shadows (Blackwood Hall), and I wanted to put one in a Scotty book–so why not a showboat? The ruling dynasty of the invented parish–St. Jeanne d’Arc, for the record–was given the same name as the relatives of Bess and George’s that they and Nancy were visiting in The Haunted Showboat, Haver. I even named the house in Mississippi River Mischief the same name as the Havers’ home in The Haunted Showboat, Sunnymeade.

And yes, the Havers’ showboat/gambling casino was also named the River Princess.

I originally planned on the case coming to Scotty through his sort-of-nephew, Frank’s blood nephew Taylor; someone he met in group therapy (which he is doing to help get through what happened to him in the previous book), or possibly even a boyfriend, someone he’s seeing. I could never get it to work right…and finally, I realized it couldn’t come from Taylor. Taylor is going to continue growing as a person and as a character, but this was too soon after his own trauma for him to be trying to help other people. And then I remembered David, Scotty’s best friend, the music teacher. David’s not been in a book since Mardi Gras Mambo, but I’ve never forgotten about him. And it made sense–David has moved on from his old school and now teaches at NOCCA (our local Fame high school), and the kid is one of his students–and David finds out by confiscating the kid’s phone in class. I wanted to create a character based on this absolute sweetheart of a young man I met; I don’t remember how we met, but friends of a mutual friend were in New Orleans, and wanted me to meet them for drinks…and they had a daughter who went to school here. The kid was a friend of hers, absolutely adorable and sweet, and a ballet major at Tulane. After the daughter and her friend left, the parents immediately turned to me and asked me, “is he gay? <The daughter> think so, and so do we.” What I should have said was, “Well, he’ll let people know if and when he’s ready”; what I actually said was “absolutely.” (I did later find out the kid did eventually come out; wherever he is, I hope he is happy and living his best life. He was so sweet and charming and likable…) When I started writing the character, I made him unlikable, arrogant and sure of himself and his own beauty, and the effect it had on other people. That was wrong, and I went back and made him more of a naïve kid, with a strong sense of right and wrong; and the story worked a lot better. It wasn’t like Scotty to be so judgmental about this kid; if anything, especially after what happened to Taylor, he’s be super-protective.

And this tale–the corrupt old politician and the beautiful teenager working at the food court at Lakeside Mall–gave me a chance to dig into something from Scotty’s past that’s never been truly explored: that his first lover was his high school wrestling coach when he was about fifteen/sixteen. This came up in Jackson Square Jazz–which of course has been unavailable for thirteen years–and I always meant to circle back around to it, just never did…but over the years there have been throwaway lines in books about how Scotty has always preferred older men (Frank is fifteen years older; we’re not really sure how old Colin is), and so to bring it up again in this instance? Yes, perfect.

I loved my story about the corrupt politician, the wrecked showboat in St. Jeanne d’Arc Parish, and the teenager, but something was missing.

I realized two things: something very important was missing, and the crimes of the Haver family were just too big and too many to fit into this book, so I chose to focus on only one…and then the Murdaugh case broke. The Murdaughs were a real life Haver family, and their crimes were almost exactly the same! So, I ripped one of their crimes from the headlines and made that the primary focus of the story, and it was the right choice: the book started falling into place and the story began flowing. I was very nervous about the book–slicing out all the other crimes while building up only one was tricky, since they were all woven through the entire manuscript and the new one had to be as well. I also wasn’t sure if the subject matter was handled appropriately; the old/young daddy/boy thing is the gay community is often mistaken for something much worse than it is, and talking about gay teenagers’ sexuality is also kind of a third rail. But I trust my editor, and she loved it.

I hope you will, too.

You can preorder it here, if you like, or from your favorite e-retailer or local independent!

It’s Raining Men

The first song I ever danced to in a gay bar was, quite naturally, “It’s Raining Men.”

I never said I wasn’t a stereotype, did I?

I was twenty-one the first time I ever set foot in a gay bar. (If there were gay bars anywhere near me in Kansas, I had no idea) It was in Fresno, California, of all places; where I spent the 80’s and which I often lovingly refer to as “Topeka in the Valley.” It wasn’t much of anything, really; a small building on Blackstone Avenue, I think just past Olive, and near the off-ramp for the new cross-town highway in an attempt to alleviate traffic on the main streets of the city (it may have been further north). The bar was called the Express, and someone I worked with–the first obviously gay man I ever knew, and certainly the first one who was out and proud and not ashamed of it–took me one night after work. I was nervous as hell. I had no idea what I was getting myself into, and I remember it was dark and crowded. There was a bigger front room with the bar, and there was a smaller dance floor further in the back. We arrived–I didn’t recognize the song that was playing–got a beer (he got a vodka and cranberry), and then the next song started up. I didn’t know it, had never heard it before, but he dragged me out onto the dance floor and yes, the song was quite a jam. I loved it, and rather self0-consciously danced my ass off (I always loved to dance). My friend later told me the song was by the Weather Girls, who used to sing back-up for Sylvester, and it was called “It’s Raining Men.” The song was utterly ridiculous–it still is–but those powerhouse vocals, the driving beat, and the absolute joy in the idea that all you had to do was “rip off the roof and stay in bed” so a hot man will drop in from the sky for you? How could gay men not embrace the song? I bought the single at Tower Records a few days later, and every time that song played, I’d be out on the dance floor. Even now, when I hear it, I always think back to that first night I went to a gay bar.

HIV/AIDS was already a thing, but we didn’t know much about it in Fresno; it seemed like something new and scary but maybe no worse than some other new diseases that had been discovered in the 1970’s/early 1980’s. The rare yet terrifying information and reporting on it referred to it as GRID. It eventually claimed that co-worker who took me to my first gay bar, and his roommate, who was the one who told me years later that the co-worker (whose name I cannot recall, I just know it started with a K) was in the hospital, dying. “It’s Raining Men” always reminds me of him; always takes me back to that first time when I so nervously paid my cover charge and flashed my ID and walked into my first ever gay bar. There was another gay bar in Fresno, the Red Lantern, that was in a much shoddier (“dangerous”) part of town. (Gay bars, back in the day, were never in the best neighborhoods. Tracks in Ybor City in the early 90’s–when I lived in Tampa–was also not in the best neighborhood. Ybor City did begin gentrifying before I moved away, but originally? Yeah, not the best neighborhood.) I went there a few times as well–made friends there, made friends in the other bar, too. I lost all those friends, of course, and their names and faces are also gone, more lives lost to the mists of time in my memory. It seems a bit shameful to not be able to remember the names and faces of the first people who knew a part of me I’d never let anyone see before, but they also didn’t know me in that I kept the other part of my life secret from them.

It’s very strange, because I decided to google the gays bars of Fresno while I was writing this and apparently the Express closed in 2013? I don’t think it stayed in the same location–according to the site I found it had also been called “708” before becoming the Express again; who knows what that was all about. But the Red Lantern is still there on Belmont Avenue, in the same location; how wild is that? That’s a pretty long-lived gay bar for a place like Fresno, really. I remember in Houston there was JR’s, and Heaven, and maybe another one there in the Montrose district. But I didn’t start spending a lot of my weekend evenings in gay bars until I moved to Tampa. Tracks in Ybor City and Howard Avenue Station were the two primary gay bars when I lived there; and there was Bedrox on Clearwater Beach–which was the gay section.

And of course, there are gay bars everywhere in New Orleans. I haven’t set foot in one in a number of years, and may never do so again. I’m old; spending the night dancing would end with me in the hospital, or needing days to recover.

I don’t know what gay bars are like now because I’ve not been a part of that culture for a very long time–we haven’t even done condom outreach during special weekends in the bars in years anymore–which is why it’s hard for me to write about Scotty being still a party-boy. His age in the book I just finished and turned in is roughly forty-three or forty-four; after Katrina when I had to actually pick a time for the books to have been set (Katrina couldn’t be ignored), I decided that the Southern Decadence where Scotty met both Frank and Colin was in 2004, Jackson Square Jazz was that Halloween, and Mardi Gras Mambo was Carnival 2005. Scotty had just turned twenty-nine in Bourbon Street Blues, which meant he was roughly born in 1976, which works with the other timelines, making him twelve or thirteen when the Cabildo caught fire the last time. While the other books can be more amorphous, obviously Who Dat Whodunnit was set in January of 2010, right before the Saints won the Super Bowl. With the pandemic starting in 2020–which I will deal with at some point–this one had to take place before the world shut down, so I am thinking it’s May of 2019. I don’t want to skip ahead a year to the pandemic, so Quarter Quarantine Quadrille will be further in the future. I kind of want to do Decadence again in another book–with Scotty older but not much wiser–but am not entirely sure. I also would like to really do a Scotty Halloween book, and maybe even a hurricane evacuation one, I don’t know.

I am, however, very glad that I did write those first three Scotty books, when I was enmeshed in gay bar culture, because I’m glad it’s preserved in fiction. That world is gone now–washed away when the levees failed and the city rebuilt. Someone once told me I was the only person to document that pre-Katrina gay male existence, of going out to bars and being promiscuous and dancing all night long and drinking too much and occasionally dipping into party drugs.

I’m also kind of glad modern gays don’t have to use the weekends and gay bars as a place to let loose and be as free and gay as possible, which they couldn’t do during the week. Friday nights were always a relief, a respite from a cold and unloving world that judged us harshly and wished us harm.

I don’t miss the bright lights, the cigarette smoke (that’s how long it’s been), the stench of male sweat and the smell of poppers in the air as the deejay spins another banger. I mean, I do, but not in a sad kind of way; those memories are lovely and they make me a little wistful for the days when gay bars weren’t clogged with bachelorette parties and obnoxious drunk straight girls. But those weren’t the good old days, really; we had no rights and our sex lives were against the law; the few legal protections we have now were goals back then, something we could strive to achieve sometime in the distant future. I certainly never thought Lawrence would decriminalize my sex life and Obergefell would make it legal for Paul and I to marry; I never thought those things would happen during my lifetime. I didn’t expect to see an openly gay member of the Presidential cabinet; out queer characters as leads in television shows and movies–none of these things seemed possible to that closeted twenty-one year old who walked wide-eyed into the Express and went out to dance to “It’s Raining Men.”

I had no idea what the future held for me or for my community that night. In some ways I wish I could let that kid know everything would be okay and his life would turn out so much better than he ever dared dream…but knowing might change things, and I wouldn’t want to change anything that would take away the life I live now, because I love it.

Blood Bitch

Saturday morning in the Lost Apartment.

The ZOOM thing I had to do yesterday went well; I am always self-conscious about these things. But I got to read from #shedeservedit, which I hadn’t done before, and it was lovely to be able to say that it was nominated for both Agatha and Anthony Awards. As Constant Reader is obviously aware, I don’t really boast or brag or broadcast about good things that happen to me, but damn it, I’m going to for just a goddamned minute. I can’t say for sure that #shedeservedit was the first queer book to get an Agatha nomination, but I can say for sure it’s one of the few that ever have–and I feel very confident in saying it was definitely the first time a book from a queer press has been nominated. Bury Me in Shadows might not have been the first queer book nominated for an Anthony, but it was certainly the first queer one to be nominated in two different categories. Last year’s Best Paperback Original category for the Anthonys was the first time two queer books by two queer writers from two different queer presses were nominated (shout out to the amazing Cheryl Head, who shared the honor with me!). I am also one of the few authors to be nominated in two different categories at the Anthonys in the same year; this year saw me become of the few authors ever nominated in three different categories in the same year.

When I actually take the time to stop and think about it, it’s actually pretty fucking amazing and groundbreaking. I certainly never saw any of that in my crystal ball, or would have ever dared to dream about that happening. I’ve also been nominated for a Macavity, a Shirley Jackson, a Lefty, an Agatha, and a total of seven nominations from the Anthonys (I did win the first time I was nominated, for Best Anthology for Blood on the Bayou), which is a pretty nice resume, really; I’d be super-impressed by those credentials if they belonged to someone else, so why am I so reluctant, cautious, scared to take pride in my own accomplishments? It’s one thing to be self-deprecatory about your writing and your career, but awards are something you have no control over, so why not take pride in them? If the mentality I was raised with was “be humble and let other people acknowledge your work” why can’t I be proud of myself when other people are acknowledging my work?

Heavy heaving sigh.

I slept well again last night. Paul got home late and I spent most of the evening reading nonfiction. I was very tired most of the day yesterday, but got chores done around the work-at-home duties and thus the apartment isn’t a complete and utter disaster area this morning. I do have a load of dishes to put away and have some more things in the sink that need to go into the dishwasher, but overall the kitchen/office is in pretty good shape this morning (the living room is an entirely different story, of course). Today is Gay Pride, and Saints and Sinners has a booth, so Paul will be gone most of the day. Yes, I am not going to Pride again this year, because i have to stay home and get all of this work done, or at least progressed a bit further. It’s going to be hot as hell out there, but I have the entire apartment to myself for almost the entire day, which never happens, so I need to take full advantage of this opportunity. I’d like to get caught up with several chapters revised today; have to look over another manuscript, and I want to get some reading done today. I am probably also going to take some time to answer some emails and try to get the inbox emptied out. I also need to write another Pride post–but I don’t want to write about anything negative, so maybe I’ll go finish one of my “wistful memories about the past” posts; I’ve started several of these and it would be kind of fun to finish them; at least fun for me; I never know if any of my Constant Readers find these entries fun. In a way, it’s kind of like working on my memoirs, and just remembering things the way I remember them–whether I remember correctly or not–is okay for a blog post, methinks. Posts about gay joy are a lot more fun than the ones about what it’s like to be oppressed.

And maybe later I can get caught up on Superman and Lois, which I forgot that I was watching. Whoops! Not sure why this season didn’t grab me the way the previous ones did; the Jonathon Kent recasting kind of threw me off a bit, but that’s really not fair to the replacement actor now, is it? No, not really. And I should spend some time with the book I’m reading today as well, so I can finish it because really great books (the one I am reading is also great, make no mistake) but this is what I have on deck now: Beware the Woman by Megan Abbott; All the Sinners Bleed by S. A. Cosby; The Hunt by Kelly J. Ford; Everybody Knows by Jordan Harper; and Ozark Dogs by Eli Cranor (lots of Southern Gothic there, which is delightful, to say the least) and there’s also these old anthologies I ordered from eBay. I need to write a lot today; I’ll probably did into the next chapter as soon as I finish this and do some filing to clear my mind and get it ready to write fiction.

Writing about my award short-lists had me thinking once again about what to do with my papers. The thought of having to catalogue them myself is unpleasant and means it would never get done (why is there no ebook of Jackson Square Jazz, Greg?), and I had pretty much come around to the point of view that I could easily just throw it all away but thinking about the award recognition made me question that decision all over again. But…while the blog itself only shines a light on a very carefully curated (right?) segment of my life, I also talk about writing and so forth on here, so future scholars (should my post turn of the century career be of any interest to any such future scholars) can always just come here and read to learn about me. My papers are just manuscripts, anyway; marked up and revised and scribbled all over–and I have most of that as a digital record, anyway. So, yes, that makes the most sense, and the project for this summer will be getting rid of all this paper hanging around here and up in the attic and over in the storage place. Besides, I’m not that interesting, really. I don’t think I am an influential voice in queer crime writing, either, and probably within a few years of my mandated-by-will cremation, will be most likely forgotten. I am actually fine with that, to be honest; very few writers from every generation are remembered–probably less than ten percent from every period, really; and whether or not I helped raise the bar for queer crime writers isn’t for me to say.

And besides, the thing I am most likely going to be remembered for is longevity, anyway, and I am fine with that.

Which sounds like a lovely place to segue into the spice mines. Have a lovely Saturday, Constant Reader, and I will be back at some point.

Hollywood

Someone asked me once, many years ago, about who I would cast in a movie or television series if the Scotty books were ever adapted. I honestly don’t remember who I originally cast, all those years ago, as Scotty, if given a choice; time has made Swiss cheese out of my memory banks, alas. I do remember thinking Christopher Meloni would be my choice for Frank, even though physically they aren’t alike (Frank is tall and more lean than Meloni) and I know I wanted to cast Pam Grier as Venus (God, what dream casting!), but the rest I don’t remember. Just as well, really, I suppose. If I were to cast them today, I’d probably go with someone like Jake Gyllenhaal as Scotty, or Tom Holland; someone like that. Frank would be a very good role for Alan Ritchson, but he’s not old enough, alas. Maybe Holland as Scotty, Gyllenhaal as Colin, and Ritchson for Frank?

That casting would make for some really amazing sex scenes.

But I don’t waste a lot of my time speculating about movie or television deals. The Scotty series was optioned once for two years, but nothing ever came of it (although I miss those quarterly checks I used to get before the option lapsed) and I don’t really see how one could film one of the Scotty books, anyway. Bourbon Street Blues would require a mob of hot male extras in various stages of undress, for one thing, and then a night shoot in a swamp. Jackson Square Jazz is more internal, and Mardi Gras Mambo would require the recreation of not only Carnival but one of the parades on St. Charles.

It’s fun to think about, but…truth be told I’d just sell the rights and sit back to wait and see how it all turned out. I really don’t have much desire to write for television or film; never have, actually. I also always remember James M. Cain’s response to a question about whether Hollywood had “ruined” his novels; he turned around, pointed to the copies on his bookshelf and said, “They look just fine to me.” (Caveat: at one point in my life I really want to be a writer for soaps. That is the only interest in writing for any type of live action entertainment I’ve ever had.)

Yesterday wound off not being such a great day, I’m afraid. I woke up feeling pretty good and seemed like everything was going to align for a pretty good day. I spent the morning doing touch-ups around the house between reading more of Lori Roy’s marvelous Edgar-winning Let Me Die in His Footsteps; I ran the errands that were needed; and I did some filing. But just when I was getting ready to settle in to work on the book…the Internet went out. Yes, we were having modem problems again, and after an extremely frustrating hour spent dealing with on-line tech assistance (which isn’t very helpful) I remembered something from the last time something went wrong with the Internet and I was able to get a stopgap fix into place, but by then my mood had gone down the toilet and I was feeling a lot of anxiety and frustration on top of anger. So, I sat down again my easy chair and reread the chapters again that I was supposed to be revising to see if the fixes I came up with the other night would actually work, and I believe that to be the case. It was also a reminder than I am still in the process of working through grief, because I really snapped and went down the dark path rather quickly and easily yesterday–so I thought it was probably best to simply go ahead and ride it out. Cox is coming out today to bring a new modem and get it set up, so hopefully this will put an end to this periodic Internet issue. (Our modem is ancient; so ancient they can’t even service them anymore, which is what we found out the last time there was an issue, and even as I type these words I am remembering the last tech advised me to get a new one and I never did because I forgot, of course.)

So today I am going to spend most of my day working on the revision and getting caught up. I have emails to answer but they can wait until Tuesday. I want to spend some more time with Lori Roy’s novel this morning, maybe even finishing it, and get a lot of writing done around other things, like touching shit up and more filing and cleaning the kitchen and so forth. I am pleased I got the errands handled yesterday and some cleaning around here, which was sorely needed. I also found my hearing test results so I can start trying to navigate the world of obtaining and financing hearing aids. There’s a part of me that thinks it will be marvelous to be able to hear at 100% again–if I ever did–and there’s another part of me that thinks it’s kind of nice that I don‘t hear everything. And I am trying to be kinder to. myself. That’s why I walked away from everything and just spent the day yesterday dealing with the negativity the day had introduced into my life. I knew I wouldn’t be able to really write anything because I was in too negative a place, and trying to work would make the darkness even worse (sometimes work can get me through the darkness, but yesterday I could tell–and this wasn’t me trying to be lazy or anything, either–it was one of those times when I would find the work frustrating and aggravating. The downward spiral was such that there was no spiraling up, and anything else would keep the spiral turning on its downward axis. I do know that much about myself–and even knew that I would probably try to beat myself up over losing a day to the moodiness and subconscious grief. But progress in the mental health sector of my life was made–I recognized and diagnosed where I was at yesterday and what would make it worse rather than better, and even this morning I am taking that as a win rather than berating myself for the loss of a day’s work.

And I am really enjoying turning this piece of shit into an actual Scotty book. (I was worried during the completion of the earlier drafts that I didn’t know how to write a Scotty book anymore; those worries were for naught. I just have to always remember that Scotty is there, inside my brain, and I will always find his voice again, even if it takes a while. I should always revisit one of the books before I try writing another one.) I have that sense of who he is again and what the books should be like and I am hearing his voice in my head again, all of which I am counting as wins.

I was also thinking about the next Scotty book–because when I am ever not looking ahead to what’s next on the horizon–as well as a call for submissions for an anthology I want to write something for. Crazy, right?

So, I think I am going to make another cup of coffee, go read for about an hour, and then dive back into the book. Have a lovely Sunday, Constant Reader, and I’ll talk to you again either later today or perhaps not until tomorrow.

La Isla Bonita

Sliding into Tuesday like it’s nobody’s business and here we go!

I managed to start gathering everything to send to my accountant last night, which was nice. It wasn’t as difficult to calculate my expenses this past year as it has been in previous years; I don’t know what exactly that says about my writing career but there you have it. I felt pretty groggy for most of the day, like I never really woke up to begin with, but it wasn’t a bad day by any means; I just kind of felt like I was sleepwalking through most of it, to be honest. I ran errands when I got off from work, and then I came home and worked on the tax stuff. I”ll finish it this morning before I leave for work, will double check it all over lunch, and hopefully get it all sent in. Huzzah. Then I came home where we finished off The Last of Us, which we both really enjoyed. It was a bit colder yesterday than I was expecting–I was cold all day at the office, which means a long-sleeved sweater is in the offing today, because today is going to be colder than yesterday (well aware that cold is relative; the high today is forecast for 69 degrees, which is cold here for April, sue me). Because I was gathering the taxes, and went straight from that to The Last of Us, I didn’t get to spend any time with Scorched Grace last night, which was a pity. Perhaps tonight.

I feel like I slept well last night, even though I kept waking up. I don’t feel groggy this morning, or that weird thing like yesterday where my body is groggy but my mind is alert. My coffee is good this chilly morning in my windows, but it’s fine. I need to get ink for my printer on my way home from the office tonight (hurray); I don’t understand how the colored ink has now run out twice before the black, when 90% of what I print is from Word documents…in black and white. But there you have it, you know. Tomorrow is pay-the-bills day, too; which means a morning spent trying to get all the bills paid. My financial fortunes are turning around–I still owe far too much money, though–but I am gradually, slowly and surely getting there. I’m hoping that by the end of the year I will be making significant progress in paying down my debt. That’s one of the goals for the year, and I am definitely hoping that it continues the way it’s going.

Tonight I am going to start tearing into the revision of Mississippi River Mischief. It definitely needs work, make no mistake about that, but I am not as overawed by it as I was originally–because of course I hate everything I write and am always convinced it’s a steaming pile of crap. It is–there’s a lot to be cleaned up, plot holes to fill, bad writing to clean up and try to make sing–a mess, to be sure, but it’s fixable; everything is always fixable. We also will probably get caught up on some of the other shows we watch–I like that we get Ted Lasso a day early–after I finish my work and do some more of the chores around the house that need doing (my kitchen is an utter disaster area, and I want to make chicken salad), and of course, there are always odds and ends around the kitchen that need filing or put away. I am going to have an insane writing schedule, because I want to get this finished before I leave for Malice Domestic on April 17th, which only gives me a couple of weeks to get this under control. But big pushes on the weekends should do the trick. I have a staff meeting this Friday morning, which means getting up earlier than I would prefer and being out among the rest of the living long before I probably should be, but such is life. I can also run errands after the meeting on my way home as well, which is pretty cool–getting them out of the way, at any rate–and here’s hoping for a super-productive weekend where I will make amazing and significant progress on the manuscript, will finish Scorched Grace and start reading whatever is next in the TBR pile, where there are an awful lot of good things waiting for me.

Which is lovely, of course. It’s always nice when you have a pile of lovely books to choose one from for your reading pleasure. And of course, I am volumes behind on some series I enjoy as well as some authors of whom I am a huge fan. (Looking at you, Mary Russell!) I am kind of looking forward to getting this book finished and being able to breathe without a deadline for a while; of course I’ll be working on something else, but there’s no need for killing myself to make a deadline, either. I was actually reflecting last night about my rereads of Never Kiss a Stranger and Festival of the Redeemer–both of which are closer to being finished than I actually had believed before diving into the reread. I could even use Festival of the Redeemer to close out my short story collection–it’s always nice to throw a 20k+ word count novella in at the end of a collection–but I think I would also rather wait and do the three-novellas-in-one thing my publisher had recommended. I do have four or five novellas on hand, so using one and then replacing it in the novella collection wouldn’t be an issue. I also have to edit Jackson Square Jazz at some point to get the ebook up and out.

Sigh. So much to do and so little time in which to do it all.

And on that note, I am heading into the spice mines. Y’all have a great Payday Eve (even if it isn’t your payday eve) and I will check in with you again tomorrow.

Jumpin’ Jack Flash

He’s a gas, gas, gas!

Here we are on another gray weekend morning. It was supposed to rain off and on all day yesterday–it didn’t–but it turned out to be a pretty good day. I wrote about eight thousand words or so, give and take, and made groceries in the afternoon. I did take care of some chores around the Lost Apartment, too, and I spent some time yesterday morning with Other Horrors, which I should finish this morning as I only have three stories left. There have been a couple that puzzled me, but overall, I’ve enjoyed the collection for the most part. I’d be pressed to pick a favorite story, though. Reading it has again reminded me that I am not, no matter how much I wish I was, a horror writer. I just don’t have the imagination, I don’t think, to be a horror writer. I can write Gothic suspense–suspense stories with a touch of the supernatural in them, like Lake Thirteen and Bury Me in Shadows–but I just don’t have the kind of mind that goes to horror when I think about writing.

We also finished off That 90’s Show last night and started watching Mayfair Witches, an adaptation of Anne Rice’s Mayfair trilogy, beginning with my favorite of her novels, The Witching Hour. I am predisposed to like this, since I loved the book so much (the rest of the trilogy not so much), and of course I drove past the house they turned into the Mayfair house for filming on Prytania Street all the time. (They did not use the actual house at First and Chestnut; one thing I did have a problem with was the way they showed Dierdre’s porch, which was different on the actual house than how depicted on the show) There are two more episodes for us to get through tonight, which is cool. I slept extremely well last night again–it’s remarkable how well I’ve been sleeping since getting back from New York–and my psoriasis seems to be under control again for the first time in years. There are a few things I need from the grocery store, but I think I can safely put that off until tomorrow and can stop on the way home from work. This morning I did get up earlier than I wanted to–I am sleeping so well I could stay in bed all day without an issue, I think–but I eel good. My legs have finally stopped feeling sore and tired, thank God, and I think I can safely say that I have completely reacclimated to my day to day life again.

I’m still listening to the Hadestown score, but I also started listening to the Christine McVie-Lindsay Buckingham album the two recorded a few years ago, and it’s quite good. The harmonies! Although I can’t help but think two things while listening: first, I wish Lindsay Buckingham had produced one of her solo albums and second, the one thing missing is Stevie Nicks and this would have made an amazing Fleetwood Mac album, which I think was what it was originally intended to be but Stevie wasn’t available or something or another. It’s also sad to know there will never be another Fleetwood Mac album since Christine’s untimely passing last year (not with my favorite line-up, at any rate). I need to move her solo album from the 1980’s back into my rotation–it’s a great and always underrated record. It’s hard to imagine the band moving on without either Christine or Lindsay (whom they fired), and Stevie already has a band she tours with as a solo act…sigh. Fleetwood Mac was the soundtrack of my teens and twenties and it’s just very weird that it’s finally over after all these years for me. When I write about the 1970’s–which I probably will do either later this year or sometime next–it will indelibly have Fleetwood Mac music all over the score of my work.

When I finish this book, I have to spend February revising Mississippi River Mischief and should spend some time doing a massive copy edit of Jackson Square Jazz so I finally have all of the Scotty series for sale as ebooks at long last. Once I get that done, March will be spent revising the one I am writing now, and then finally come April I can get back to work on Chlorine at long last. I’d like to get a draft of it finished in April so I can write another first draft of something else in May (I already know what it is going to be) and then will probably spend the rest of the year writing short stories and novellas and revising everything to see what can happen with them. Next year I want to write yet another Scotty book and that’s when I am going to try to write my 1970’s Chicago suburb boys-are-disappearing novel, too. None of this is carved into stone tablets, either–things always come up along the way, new ideas or hey Greg want to write a book we’ll pay you xxx for it and I never ever say no to things like that. I’d also like to come up with a new short story collection at some time, or perhaps the three-in-one book novella collection; it’s hard to say. And I kind of want to try to write a romance. There’s always so much I want to write, isn’t there?

Heavy heaving sigh. I don’t think I’ll ever match the days when I used to write four or five novels per year, but I do think I am going to be able to get a lot more writing done now in the next few years. Next weekend I am doing a signing at the ALA event here in New Orleans at the Convention Center, and of course the next weekend I am off to Alabama, and then it’s Carnival. Utter madness!

And now I am going to head into the spice mines. Have a lovely Sunday, Constant Reader, and I will probably check in with you again later.

The Nightwatchers

I never really thought much about writing vampire fiction.

I’ve been a Stephen King fan since I read a battered paperback copy of Carrie when I was fourteen, and ‘salem’s Lot continues to be a top 5 King novel for me, if not my favorite (it’s always a toss-up between this and The Stand, frankly) and despite my attempts to turn myself into a King clone in the 1980’s, I’ve never been very good at writing horror. I love to read it–there are some truly terrific horror writers publishing now (if you’ve not read Paul Tremblay, you really need to start), and they are, if you’ll pardon the incredibly cheap pun, killing it. I can do creepy. I can do Gothic. I can do atmosphere and all those marvelous things I love in horror fiction. But I cannot, for the life of me, scare people. I don’t know why I can’t write anything that gets under your skin and into your nervous system; the kind of thing that makes you leave a light burning after you go to bed. I wish I could write like that. I’ve certainly tried a few times…I still have an idea for a horror novel sitting in the back of my brain that I am really going to have to try to get around to writing at some point, because I really should give it a real try sometime.

I have always enjoyed reading vampire stories. “salem’s Lot has always been one of my top five Stephen King novels; I loved Dracula (oh to write an epistolary novel!) and numerous other such tales. It took me awhile to come around on Anne Rice’s The Vampire Chronicles (a tale for another time), but I did eventually. Twilight never struck any chords with me. But the one thing I never thought I would do was write about vampires, despite loving them the way I do–going all the way back to my childhood and Dark Shadows. I don’t think I ever would have written about vampires, but my editor at Kensington thought I could; thought I would do a good job at it, and encouraged it, beginning with an offer to write an erotic vampire novella for a collection to be called Midnight Thirsts.

Go home, old man, Rachel thought, tapping her black fingernails on the counter.

It was a quarter till nine, fifteen minutes before she could lock the doors. Everything was clean and the cash register was already counted down. All she had really left to do was dump the remains of the day’s coffee down the sink, lock the cash drawer in the safe, and turn everything o. She’d be gone by ten minutes after at the latest.

She glanced out the big windows fronting the coffee shop. The streetlight just outside cast a yellowish glow in the thick mist pressing against the glass. She shivered and looked back at the old man. He was sitting at one of the tables in the far corner, with the same cup of coffee he’d ordered when he came in around seven thirty. He hadn’t touched it. It was still as full as when she’d filled the cup, only no steam was coming off the black surface now. He didn’t seem to be watching for anyone, or waiting. He never glanced at this watch, which she’d spotted as a platinum Tag Heuer, nor did he ever look out the window. Every once in a while. he would look up from his newspaper and catch her staring. He’d smile and nod, then go back to his reading.

Apparently, he was determined to read every word.

She stood up, bending backward so her back cracked. The night had been really slow. The Jazz Café, even on weeknights, usually was good for at least thirty to forty dollars in tips. Tonight, when she counted out the tip jar, it yielded less than seven dollars. Just enough to get her a pack a cigarettes and a twenty-ounce Diet Coke at Quartermaster Deli on her way back to her apartment. It wasn’t, she thought, wiping down the counter yet again, even worth coming in for.

Usually, on this kind of night, cold and damp and wet, Rachel was kept busy with orders for triple lattés. The tables would be full of people who would coming in shivering, bundled against the cold wetness in the air, which seemed to penetrate even the thickest coat. They’d hold their steaming cups of coffee with both reddened hands, talking and laughing. SOme would be doing their homework on laptops.

She liked busy nights, when the orders kept coming and the tip jar filled. Then, the time seemed to fly by, her closing shift passing in the blink of an eye. She hated the slow nights, when every passing minute seemed to take an eternity. She glanced back at the clock on the wall, then back at the old man. If you would just leave, she thought, I could go ahead and close early.

He’s kind of good-looking, she thought as she sipped her tepid cup of green tea, for an older guy.

At that moment he look up, and their eyes met. His were blue, a deep blue with some green in it. Once again, he nodded his head to her and smiled, but this time he didn’t go back to his newspaper. He held her eyes.

Not to worry, my child, I’ll be gone soon enough.

She turned away, shaking her head, the hair on the back of her neck standing up…

As is frequently the case with my work, The Nightwatchers began as a short story. Within a year of moving here, Paul had struck up a friendship with the director of the Tennessee Williams/New Orleans Literary Festival (which is where he now works), and as such he volunteered us both to help out with the 1997 Festival. I worked at the sign-in desk, where people picked up their badges and so forth, and it was in the lobby of Le Petite Theatre de Vieux Carre, a marvelous old theater on the corner of Chartres and St. Peter, right across the street from the Cabildo, and kitty-corner to Jackson Square. It was very old, and the main stage was named for Helen Hayes, who’d actually played there before. It was haunted, too–every building in New Orleans is–and I heard some of the stories. Being a volunteer, I had access to back stage, upstairs to the balcony, the prop attic; everywhere. (I eventually used some of this knowledge in Jackson Square Jazz.) At some point during the weekend I had an idea for a story–a horror story–about a theater company rehearsing in an old haunted theater in the French Quarter, where the person always cast in the lead female roles is also sleeping with the director. The young actress who deserved the part doesn’t listen to company gossip, but she does eventually find out that the rumors are true, and at some point made a deal with a devil who appeared to her in her dressing room, on and on and on. I called the story The Nightwatchers, because to me, that was what the devils/demons were called–they watch at night for souls to prey on. When I was asked to write this novella, I dug out the story and reread it, deciding it was perfect to adapt into something new.

I played with it a while, and couldn’t quite get it right in my head until I decided to abandon the theater idea; I’d tried turning the girl into a gay guy but it didn’t really work. I also couldn’t seem to get the atmosphere right, either, and I was convinced–still am, in fact–that the atmosphere had to be just right or the story wouldn’t work. Then one night I was walking through the lower Quarter in December–meeting Paul somewhere, I think–and it was one of those evenings when the fog is so insanely thick that you literally can’t see more than a foot or so in front of you at any time. As I walked along the sidewalk, with the old buildings pushing up against the sidewalk, when I heard the sound of hooves on the street–and realized, bemusedly, that in the fog and the only light from a gaslight–that I could have traveled back in time. Only in New Orleans can you feel like you’ve traveled back in time when it’s foggy, I thought, and wrote an entire scene around that feeling when I got back home. It was the perfect mood/atmosphere for the story, and it worked very well.

And as I wrote the novella, I got more and more into the characters and started imagining my own supernatural world, with vampires and witches and werewolves and everything else, including a ruling council over the paranormal world, the Council of Thirteen, and the old man Rachel sees in the coffee shop is a representative of the Council, in New Orleans to hunt a rogue vampire…a vampire who believes her young friend Philip Rutledge (now the center of the story) is the reincarnation of someone he loved hundreds of years earlier when he was human (shades of Dark Shadows!) and so wants to turn Philip into his eternal companion, and it’s up to Nigel and Rachel to rescue Philip.

It was a lot of fun to write, and I left the ending a bit open so I could write more about the characters if I ever chose to do so; I actually slotted a continuation novel into my writing schedule; it was supposed to be what I wrote next after finishing Mardi Gras Mambo…needless to say, life conspired to keep me from ever getting around to this book. I am still a bit disappointed I never carried on with the story; I used this same mythology when I returned to writing about vampires again several years later with Blood on the Moon.

So, that’s how The Nightwatchers came to be a story. Writing this now I see the parallels between what I wrote and some things I read and enjoyed (or watched, a la Dark Shadows); and is my “Nightwatcher” group that different from Anne Rice’s Talamasca? Probably not.

I did read and enjoy the other novellas back in the day; I’ve been meaning to revisit Michael Thomas Ford’s because it was particularly memorable.

Book of Love

Wednesday and another edition of the biweekly Pay The Bills Day! Woo-hoo! But this is also my last paycheck at my old rate of pay; I am curious to see what my paychecks will look like when they reflect my raise–check back, Constant Reader, in precisely two weeks to find out.

Can you stand the suspense? I barely can.

I was very tired yesterday, and I slept about the same last night so I can also plan on hitting the wall today around three. I took a long lunch yesterday to record Susan Larson’s marvelous radio show The Reading Life, which will air on December 6th, and that was naturally delightful as every moment spent with Susan is. But by the time I got back to the office and got settled back into the seeing clients routine, I was very tired. I had a ZOOM meeting when I got back home last night, which was interesting and fun–it’s always lovely seeing that group of people (queer crime writers! Woo-hoo!)–and then I settled into my chair to watch Reboot and another episode of Diary of a Gigolo, which is just so much fun. I did get some writing done yesterday–terrible writing, I might add–but am hopeful that tonight I’ll get back on track. I feel like I slept about the same last night, waking up several times and never really falling deep asleep again, but this morning so far I feel good. I managed to somehow get quite a bit finished yesterday, which I didn’t think would actually be the case, given how sleepy and tired I was yesterday afternoon, but looking back over the day I can see that yes, indeed, I did get a lot done despite the exhaustion. I am adjusting to the new work week schedule, methinks; tomorrow is my last day in the office and usually I am worn down the day before my last day in the office for the week, so this is a major plus.

And now to consult the to-do list…sigh. It can wait until later, surely?

I don’t know why this morning I feel like I’ve turned some kind of corner, which makes absolutely zero sense, but that’s kind of how I feel; like I’m shaking off some kind of malaise or stupor and my mind is functioning correctly again. It’s entirely possible the booster shot I got on Monday fogged my brain for a few days–I’m blaming the insomnia issues on it for fucking sure–and now this morning that fog has cleared. I don’t know, I really can’t explain it other than that, but this is one of those mornings where I feel like I am mentally rolling up my sleeves and taking a look at all and everything I need to get done and diving in headfirst. LOL, we’ll see how long this feeling lasts, won’t we? But I feel good–and that is reflected in my mood, I guess; I’m in a pretty good mood this morning (at least thus far) but it’s probably too much to hope for that it will last the rest of the day.

Probably not, but you never know.

I was thinking last night–after talking to Susan about the next book (should there be one) in the new series, and of course my copy of Raquel V. Reyes’ second novel arrived yesterday–about how important the second book in a series is, and how much different the second books in both of my series are from the first book in each series. In the first book you have to introduce the characters and their backstories and how they relate to each other (the kind of relationships they have with each other) as well as who your main character is and try to get the reader to relate to them and like them enough to buy into the series as a whole. In the second book, you’ve already done all of this work so all you need is little sound bytes here and there to recap those backstories and so forth and you can spend a lot more time developing your plot and story. Murder in the Rue St. Ann was very different than Murder in the Rue Dauphine; revisiting the Scotty series I can see how much more complicated and layered the story of Jackson Square Jazz was in comparison to Bourbon Street Blues, which had a much simpler plot. Likewise, A Streetcar Named Murder is the launching place for this series, and hopefully it will continue (my second one is tentatively titled The House of the Seven Grables, which will probably be changed by the publisher if there is a second book in the series), and the plot I have in mind for this second Valerie book is a lot more all over the place and complicated–especially as we dig deeper into the Cooper family mystery that was brought to light in the first book.

My favorite part of writing a book is the planning stage, really.

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

Garden District Gothic

Oh, Scotty VII, what an interesting path you took to publication.

Back when ebooks and Kindles first started to be a thing, they rather revolutionized publishing. This new technology rang the death knell on some independent book stores as well as some small presses, and it was considered the great equalizer: you no longer needed to follow the long-established path to publication that went writer/agent/publisher; and just having an agent was no guarantee your book would ever see print and if it did, that it would sell. You no longer needed a publisher to put your book out and get it to readers; all you needed to do was get a cover designed and format your manuscript and upload it. This excited a lot of people; I was one of them, but still approached the entire thing very cautiously. I have never had a problem with people who elect to self-publish their work rather than follow the traditional path; I certainly never followed the traditional path or ran my career the way I was supposed to, at least according to almost every author I knew.

But ultimately, for me, the ebook revolution and becoming a publisher/author hybrid seemed not only like a risk but a time-consuming one. I didn’t have the time available to market the books I was traditionally publishing the way I should, let alone having the time to have to do all the marketing myself.

But I was curious, and remained open-minded. A friend started her own company and wanted me to write some things for her–short, more like novellas than novels–and since I’d always wanted to spin Paige off into her own series (despite being concerned about writing a mainstream type book from a woman’s perspective) and so I thought, well, here’s a chance to try something new and different. I wound up writing two of these and was partly through a third when I began to realize that even with an independent publisher doing some of the work, I just didn’t have the time or money or incentive to work any harder at marketing these books than I already was–and they needed more attention and promotion than I was able to give them, so we decided to end the business relationship, the already done books came down from sales sites, and that was the end of that.

I did eventually slap up Bourbon Street Blues as an ebook on Amazon, and it’s done okay for me; I’ve not promoted it at all but copies sell every month–but I am not getting rich, either. I also have a longer short story up as an e-original (but it’s also in my print collection Survivor’s Guilt and Other Stories) and yes, I know I need to get Jackson Square Jazz up (one of these days), and perhaps when I’ve retired and have more time, I’ll explore the self-publishing option again just for the hell of it.

But there I was, with a partially completed manuscript and it was a very fun story; I hated wasting it (it was called The Mad Catter), and so, with a little bit of tweaking, I turned it into the seventh Scotty book, and renamed it Garden District Gothic.

I really love the cover Bold Strokes gave me for it, too:

You know you live in New Orleans when you leave your house on a hot Saturday morning in August for drinks wearing a red dress.

It was well over ninety degrees, and the humidity had tipped the heat index up to about 110, maybe 105 in the shade. The hordes of men and women in red dresses were waving handheld fans furiously as sweat ran down their bodies. Everywhere you looked, there were crowds of people in red, sweating but somehow, despite the ridiculous heat, having a good time. I could feel the heat from the pavement through my red-and-white saddle shoes and was glad I’d decided wearing hose would be a bad idea. The thick red socks I was wearing were hot enough, thank you, and were soaked through. They were new, so were probably dying my ankles, calves, and feet pink. But it was for charity, I kept reminding myself as I greeted friends and people whose names I couldn’t remember but whose faces looked familiar as we worked our way up and down and around the Quarter.

Finally, I had enough around noon and decided to call it a day.

“I don’t think I’ve ever been so hot in my life, and I grew up in Alabama,” my sort of nephew, Taylor Wheeler, said in his soft accent, wiping sweat from his forehead as we trudged down Governor Nicholls Street on our way home.

“It hasn’t been this hot in a while,” I replied, trying really hard not to laugh. I’d been forcing down giggles pretty much all day since he came galloping down the back steps the way he always does and I got my first look at his outfit. “But the last few summers have been mild—this is normal for August, usually.” It was true—everyone in town was complaining about the heat like it was something unusual, but we hadn’t had our usual hellish summer weather in a couple of years.

Last summer had been not only mild but dry, with little humidity and practically no rain—which was unheard of. Usually it rains every day around three in the summer, when the humidity has gotten so thick it turns to rain.

“I don’t even want to think about how much sweat is in my butt crack,” he complained, furiously waving the fan he’d picked up somewhere, trying to create a breeze.

I gave up trying to fight it and just gave in to the laughter.

One of the primary problems of turning The Mad Catter into Garden District Gothic was that the book was intended originally to be a sequel to a pair of books that no longer existed; vanished forever into the ether. I had established a character in earlier books of the series who was supposed to take front and center in this one, but I no longer had the back story and was facing the issue of how do I introduce this woman into Scotty’s world? And it was important, because the case involved a long ago murder that took place in this woman’s Garden District mansion–she didn’t own it at the time; she bought it from the original family that owned it, and owned it at the time of the unsolved murder–but I decided the easiest way to do this was make the woman a friend of Scotty’s older sister, which is how he knew her; and she had been a member of the cast of a reality-TV show called Grande Dames of New Orleans, which had been the centering of the previous book in the now-defunct series. I always thought the Grande Dames (obviously, my version of the Real Housewives franchises) was a clever idea and a fun one to explore as well as poke fun at in a fictional setting, and I hated wasting in a series that no one could access anymore. So I decided to keep Serena, and mention that she was in the cast of the new show which hadn’t started filming yet, and she had bought this big house as a centerpiece for her to be filmed in from the show, giving up her luxurious condo in One River Place. (This also gave me the opening to center the next Scotty book in the Grande Dames show.) The party that now opened the book was a housewarming party, so Serena could show off her new manse with the checkered past.

I had also created a character in the Paige series to serve as a kind of nemesis for her, a true crime writer named Jerry Channing, whom eventually I used as the impetus for getting the plot started in The Orion Mask. Jerry became rich and famous writing a book about the infamous, unsolved murder called Garden District Gothic, which in the Paige series seemed like a Scotty title to me, and I used it as a wink to those who were familiar with the Scotty series…and so, in writing about Scotty and the gang solving this old notorious murder, why wouldn’t I call the book Garden District Gothic, since it really is a Scotty title after all?

The murder was, of course, based on the Jon-Benet Ramsey murder that dominated the media and culture for so long back in the day. I just took the set-up of the story from that real-life case and started making up my own characters and backstories for them and went with it from there. The one thing that always bothered me the most about the case was the fact that people viewed the Ramsey family as speaking to the lawyers before calling the police as suspicious; no, it’s actually smart. Sure, it made them look “guilty” in the press (with all those headlines in the tabloids screaming this conclusively proves one of the family did it!!!! Who calls their lawyer first??? To which I again repeat, people who are fucking smart call their lawyer first. Period.), but it was the smart thing to do; someone had the presence of mind to realize that the most obvious suspects in the murder of a child are going to be the immediate family, and why–in a distraught state of grief over your child’s brutal murder–you would need to have a lawyer present when you’re being questioned by the police so you don’t say anything that could be misconstrued as an admission of guilt when you are not in fact guilty.

Always, always, always call the lawyers first. Always. If i have learned anything from my extensive reading of true crime and study of crime fiction, it is “never talk to the cops without a lawyer, especially if you are innocent.”

I was pleased with it when I was finished with it, but I’d kind of like to revise the ending a bit.

And of course, writing it left me with the decision of whether to reuse my Grande Dames of New Orleans reality show for the next Scotty book.

Tag: jackson square jazz

Shame

Old Man River

It’s Raining Men

Blood Bitch

Hollywood

La Isla Bonita

Jumpin’ Jack Flash

The Nightwatchers

Book of Love

Garden District Gothic

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