Tag: Jordan Gavaris

Shallow Then Halo

Monday morning and heading into the office to start the work week. I have tomorrow off, as I have a dentist’s appointment, and with no idea how long that would take or what they might be doing to me while I am there, I just figured it was easier, much easier, to simply take the day off so as not to worry about coverage and when I can get to the office and so forth. I am very sick of my mouth and very sick of dealing with my teeth; I am very tired of looking like someone from the holler and I’d like to get it all taken care of once and for all. I will spare you my rant about dentists and my teeth, but make no promises for how I may be after the appointment.

Probably safer to take the day off.

I slept well again last night and feel very rested this morning, which is a lovely way to start the week but I am not fully awake yet, I don’t think. Come on, coffee, work your magic. I did get progress made on the revision this weekend, which has me actually back on schedule, which, of course, is absolutely lovely. I shall just keep plugging away at this every day until it’s finished, which will be this week and then I have to do revisions on another book and when that’s finished, I can breathe again. Both of these should have been finished long ago, but then again here we are, you know? I didn’t expect everything to go off the rails the way it did after Thanksgiving (although things were already off the rails and had been for quite some time, frankly, I just refused to accept or admit it), but that also just goes to show you need to be careful when setting incredibly tight deadlines–you can never completely and fully prepare for everything life is going to throw at you, but it definitely appears as though scheduling tight deadlines is kind of asking for it, in a way. You’d think I’d eventually learn, but then again–I am a stubborn-ass kind of fool who never learns when it comes to deadlines.

It was a nice weekend, really. I couldn’t focus on reading non-fiction, so spent some more time with nonfiction, which is nice. I really should make the time to read for an hour every day. I think it would help stimulate my creativity, and reading is always a learning experience for me. I try to shut off the editorial brain when I am reading something for pleasure, but it’s not always easy–nor is the oh, that was a clever way to do that or I wish I had thought of that or what a lovely piece of writing that paragraph was! Nope, that’s just as hard to turn off as the editorial brain. I’ve also been editing a manuscript, and that also has something to do with the editorial brain; I am already in that mode and I was also revising one of my own; not really surprising that I’m not able to consume and enjoy fiction whilst in the middle of doing that. I did get some chores done and I did get some revising done and I also got some rest, which is always important. We finished watching Now and Then on Apple, which was full of surprises, and then moved on to season two of The Lake, a cute little half-hour comedy on Amazon Prime. The stars are Julia Stiles (who plays the uptight bitch stepsister to perfection) and the guy who played Felix on Orphan Black, whose name I can’t think of at the moment…JORDAN GAVARIS. I think he’s an out gay actor (or he’s an actor who primarily plays gay men) who was simply brilliant in Orphan Black (the entire cast was terrific, but it was hard to notice given Tatiana Maslany’s tour-de-force as all the clones), and he is fantastic as a self-absorbed drama queen on this show, which is clever and original and funny. I recommend the show; it’s witty and funny and pretty original–and no one is talking about it, which is a shame.

Of course I am going to spend a week with my dad later this month and hopefully, I won’t have to worry about having anything due or checking emails that week, so I should be able to get a lot of reading done while I am up there. I’ll probably listen to another Carol Goodman on the way up there, but I am also starting to run out of Carol Goodmans (write more, Carol!) but I also suppose I could find another author who’d be fun to listen to in the car. (Another author I was listening to on long drives really pissed me off with her last one I listened to, so won’t be going back to her for a while.) Oooh, Lisa Lutz! Lisa Unger! Jennifer McMahon! There are so many good writers and I have soooo much reading to catch up on, too…

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

I Can’t Wait

Sunday morning and I slept late again, and again, it felt marvelous. I feel much more rested than I did yesterday morning–and I also don’t have to make an errands run today, either; lugging groceries from the car to the Lost Apartment on top of dealing with a grocery store on a Saturday of a holiday weekend wasn’t exactly an energy-enhancing experience either (my God, it was so humid yesterday; little wonder it rained off and on all day). But I did get things done–sort of. I finished reading The Savage Kind by John Copenhaver, which I really enjoyed from start to finish (more on that later); I got some chores done around the Lost Apartment, and I worked on getting better organized (always an in-process on-going thing). We binged a show on Amazon Prime last night–The Lake–which we both really enjoyed (and stayed up too late to finish watching) before retiring to bed for the evening, and now here I am this morning with a cup of coffee and slightly bleary, unfocused eyes as I write this. It’s a little cloudy and dim outside–not the blinding brightness of a cloudless morning, for sure. I don’t have to go outside for anything the next few days other than taking out the trash and using the grill–I’m probably going to cook out burgers either today or tomorrow, I can’t decide which–and then I am going to write and edit for most of the day, always a pleasure and joy. The next thing I am going to read isn’t something I can talk about, as it’s a manuscript in progress for a friend (who is also a really great writer), but I think the next book I read is indeed going to be Rob Osler’s The Devil’s Chewtoy, which is a great title and I’ve heard any number of good things about the author, who earlier this year won the Robert Fish Award from Mystery Writers of America for best debut short story–an impressive achievement, to be sure.

The Lake has an interesting premise, and it was much funnier than I thought it would be. Sixteen years ago, the main character–a gay male, Justin–had sex with his best friend (Teesa) on prom night (they were both drunk, and the only time he’s ever slept with a woman) and she became pregnant. They gave the child up for adoption–one of those “open” adoptions, so the child always knows who their adoptive and birth parents are, and has a relationship with their birth parents–which caused an even deeper rift between the main character and his father (already there because of his sexuality). After the adoption, Justin left Canada with his partner for Australia. That relationship has ended (the partner was “fucking half of Bondi Beach”), and he has returned to Canada. He brings his daughter Billie to the lake where he spent all of his summers as a child, and8 his family used to have a cottage to try to develop a relationship with her; only to discover that their old lake house was never sold–instead, his father left it to his stepsister and nemesis, Maisy, played brilliantly by Julia Stiles in an epic villain turn. The rest of the series details his schemes for getting back his lake house and feuding with Maisy; while developing a relationship with a local handyman named Riley, while his daughter ironically finds herself falling for Maisy’s son. Justin is played by Jordan Gavaris, who is terrific in the part; Constant Reader may remember Gavaris for his star turn in Orphan Black as Felix, the openly gay artist who is a foster brother to Sarah and her grounding point–seeing him in this reminded me of how terrific he was in Orphan Black, and how disappointing it is that he hasn’t broken out into a bigger star. But The Lake is terrific and funny and surprisingly twisted; I highly recommend it, and can we please have more good parts for Jordan Gavaris, please?

I still haven’t figured out what I am going to read on Thursday, either. Heavy heaving sigh. I seriously need to put some thought into that either today or tomorrow or both; I go back and forth during those brief moments when I do think about it. Should I read from Bury Me in Shadows, #shedeservedit, or one of my short stories? It would probably make more sense to read from something that might intrigue listeners to go buy the book, and even more sense to read a novel than a story, since I won’t earn anything from a sale of a copy of the anthology, really, if my reading was to move people into parting with hard-earned money to buy something of mine. Yes, the more I think about it, the more likely I am to read from #shedeservedit…or maybe “This Town.” I’ve always wanted to read that story aloud…hmmm. I just wish I had started thinking about this sooner–this is why I always end up doing things at the last minute, which always makes me feel like I’ve not prepared adequately.

But I do feel very good this morning, which is always lovely. I get paid on Wednesday this week, so I can go ahead and get the bills paid before I leave for the weekend (I cannot believe I have to get up at five a.m. for my flight; what the actual fuck was I thinking? Clearly I wasn’t. Of course, it was the only non-stop, which is what I actually was thinking. But…I’ll be tired. Very tired that evening. And probably hungry and crabby and tired and…oy. No sense freaking out about any of that right now. I’ll cross that bridge when I come to it.

And on that note, I am going to shave my head and jump in the shower and get my day’s work started. Have a lovely Sunday, Constant Reader–I will check in with you again later.