Tag: journals

Strawberry Wine

Sunday morning and I do hope all is well with you, Constant Reader! It rained overnight, so it’s a bit chillier this morning than it was yesterday (yesterday was a beautiful day, sunny and in the low seventies); the cold weather comes in tonight around bedtime. How lovely! I slept late this morning, and Sparky let me, for the most part, cuddling rather than trying to get me up most of the time. Yesterday was, for its part, mostly quiet and restful. I didn’t push myself to get things done the way I had hoped, but Paul didn’t have his trainer yesterday and decided to hang out rather than go to the office, so I spent most of the dat in my chair watching television with Paul. I watched two more French history documentaries–this time, histories of the Capet and Bourbon dynasties. We also watched Caught Stealing with Austin Butler, which was different than what we were expecting. The previews made it seem like a black comedy, and yes, there were moments of black humor in the movie, but it was more of a thriller than anything else. My primary takeaway was that Austin Butler is incredibly beautiful (which I’ve known since The Shannara Chronicles), and has the kind of charisma that is very hard to stop watching. It was one of those ‘endless nightmare’ movies, where doing a punk neighbor a favor takes the main character down a path of violence and endless, deadly mess. It also has an insanely good cast, too–Regina King, Zoe Kravitz, Liev Shrieber, etc.–and of course, was directed by Darren Aronofsky.

I did finish scanning my notes from my journal yesterday, which felt like a win, and I did some cleaning and organizing, too. The house feels very snug this morning–warm and cozy–which is really nice, and means I will get to spend some more time in my chair this morning reading and watching another history documentary; I found one on Louis XIII yesterday–the King of The Three Musketeers–who has always been overshadowed in French history by his father and son, as well as his chief minister, Cardinal Richelieu, who remains one of my favorite people in history. (I never could have picked an era of history to concentrate on had I become an historian…) The reign of Louis XIII is a very interesting period in French history, and that could very well be because of The Three Musketeers and my fervent desire to write the story from Milady’s perspective. That’s probably a pipe dream because I’ll never have the time to research and write the story, but it’s always there in the corner of my mind, like an annoying splinter that nags at me from time to time.

Today is going to be only slightly less relaxing from yesterday. I do need to clean and organize some more, and I do need to both read and write today. I also finished my old journal and started a new one this morning (and I put the date in it this time; I had a sense of time in the old ones based on the notes on short stories and novels I was actively working on at the time I was recording things in the journals, but the date will be ever so much more helpful, you know?). I also found a safe, out of the way place to store them going forward. I will continue to have to periodically do this with them, as I move on to other projects I’ve taken voluminous notes on in them–as well as short story and essay ideas that never moved from there to the active files–but it’s kind of fun to scan the pages and label them and put them away in the computer files. (That OCD thing never has gone completely away, and probably never will. Yay for chemical imbalances that are useful!)

The new season of Percy Jackson has dropped, too, which I am also looking forward to watching. I loved the world of Percy Jackson, and those are the books you should be giving your kids, not that other unoriginal and entirely ripped off fantasy series for kids whose author is raw sewage on a good day and a fiend from hell on bad ones. I greatly enjoyed reading the Percy Jackson books, and Rick Riordan’s other mythology based juvenile series are really the best, most engaging books. I would have loved them when I was a kid, because I loved ancient history and mythology growing up (thanks to Time-Life’s Great Ages of Man series, which my parents got for me). I’ve been trying to unpack my childhood and my life-long interests, and where those interests came from. Egypt, of course, is my favorite ancient empire; I’ve always had an affinity for Egypt and have always been drawn to it. (I’ve recently started another essay series about my Egyptian interests…beginning with the Time/Life Ancient Egypt book, a juvenile book called Cleopatra of Egypt and another one that was a mystery, The Mystery of the Pharaoh’s Treasure–and others along the way, including Amelia Peabody and Robin Cook’s Sphinx.)

And well, on that note, I am going to head into the spice mines for the day. I have to run to the grocery store, which I am going to do this morning, methinks, before coming back here and getting cleaned up and get that all over with…but first I am going to watch that documentary on Louis XIII while drinking coffee, eating breakfast and waking up completely. Have a lovely Sunday, wherever you find yourself, Constant Reader.

These lights–from the former human trafficking site Houmas House–are gorgeous.

I Take a Lot of Pride in What I Am

So, this is another Monday in one of the last weeks of 2025. I slept well, and only hit snooze twice, which was unusual. I feel rested and good this morning, which is absolutely delightful. I didn’t get all my chores done over the weekend, so I’ll have to put away dishes and so forth when I get home from work this evening. I also have some dishes to wash and put through the dishwasher, too. Yesterday was a nice, lovely, relaxing day. I finished watching The American Revolution and New Orleans Soul of a City (the last one was about the Saints and the Superdome–so the series was food, music, Carnival, and the Saints; pretty much the soul of New Orleans). The college football play-off seedings were released, to the anger of several fan bases, and LSU is going to the Texas Bowl to play Houston in Houston. We also watched The Roses, which was interesting. I also spent a lot of time scanning journal pages into my computer so I can get all my notes over the years on Chlorine easily accessible and in one place. It’s chilly this morning, but the rest of the week (I think) will have highs in the 1970s.

ICE is here, sweeping the city with a goal of five thousand “criminals” to deport from the New Orleans area–and they are doing it so far with all the skill, efficiency, and Constitutional adherence they’ve shown everywhere else they’ve invaded with their Gestapo tactics. The reports so far seem to have netted only thirty-eight arrests, a third of whom had criminal records (odds they’ll be here through Carnival?), and they seem to have primarily focused on the immigrant community in Kenner, the suburb with the airport and the last one before you hit swamp heading west on I-10. A friendly reminder, that always needs to be mentioned, that immigrants rebuilt the city after Katrina. That’s why New Orleans was a sanctuary city: gratitude, which always seems to be in such short supply in the American psyche. I’ve been blocking the racist trash from the outer parishes and “metro area” who always claim to be from New Orleans but never are, who show up with their hateful bullshit on social media. I drove one bitch all the way off Threads recently, who pulled the I live in New Orleans which then became I’m from New Orleans to I was born in New Orleans but a quick search of her social media (wide open, I might add) showed she actually lives in ALABAMA, like the lying piece of racist trash she was, and that her husband worked for a government contractor. When I asked her how her husband’s employer would react to her being a racist lying piece of shit on-line, POOF. She was gone.

Keep New Orleans out of your disgusting, filthy, lying racist-ass mouths–and if you’re going to be such a troll on-line, don’t use your real name and leave all of your social media open. They’re rarely smart, you know?

And for the record, racist skanks in the burbs, New Orleans has always had crime; it’s a port fucking city. The history of this city is drenched in blood spilled by violence. Y’all fled the city after integration. Fuck ALL the way off.

Nothing makes my blood boil more than non-New Orleanians complaining about New Orleans. Begone! You have no power here!

But as always, going through the journals to scan my notes from Chlorine (I actually found the very first time I wrote the idea down, which was kind of cool) was revelatory; I really need to go through my journals more regularly to remind myself what is in there. There are some terrific ideas for short stories and essays in there, as well as notes on multiple projects that are still unfinished. As I was saying yesterday, my journals are far more informative about my writing process than anything in the files, so I think one of my projects for the rest of December is to ditch a lot of my files and get everything compressed into the filing cabinet. I also need to prune the books some more, and start clearing out the storage attic, and take everything off the tops of the kitchen cabinets (I literally have boxes of books everywhere).

And then there’s that moment when Carl Hiaasen shares your newsletter post reviewing hid book Fever Beach–yes, I still fanboy all the time. Eeee! (And it’s getting lots of likes and shares, which is really cool and was never the point of the review!)

And so, without anymore delays, I am heading into the spice mines this morning. Have yourself a merry little Monday, Constant Reader, and I’ll be back on Tuesday morning!

The river parishes light bonfires on the levees to direct Papa Noel, an incredibly cool Louisiana tradition. They feature prominently in Ellen Byron’s mystery A Cajun Country Christmas.

He’ll Have to Go

A gray Sunday morning in the Lost Apartment, with a lot of things to do this morning. I have some errands to run, some food to prepare, and proofing to do today before I rest my sleepy little head in my bed this evening. Sparky wasn’t having my “let me sleep” mentality this morning, but he didn’t get aggressively insistent until about seven, so it was fine. I feel pretty well rested this morning, too, which is very nice. Yesterday was a nice day. I didn’t get nearly as much done as I should have, but I don’t care nor do I mind. I did have the games on for most of the day, but not really watching. Texas Tech throttled BYU, and then Georgia embarrassed Alabama, which I did watch. I didn’t watch either of the evening games, but was delighted for Indiana and Duke. I don’t think anyone see either of them winning ahead of those games, and what lovely chaos yesterday’s results unleashed on the college football playoffs, and there will be lots of anger and arguments once the teams who made it are announced this Tuesday. Since LSU is out of it, I’d love to see either Indiana or Vanderbilt win it all…but Vanderbilt probably isn’t getting in. I don’t know how much attention I am going to pay to the playoffs to begin with–I didn’t watch hardly any of it last year.

We also got caught up on Heated Rivalry–I hadn’t known it wasn’t all available yet until last night–and I am reserving my commentary until we’ve finished watching the entire thing. I’m enjoying the ride thus far, and that’s saying something–Paul is loving it. I’m not a hockey fan, so that aspect of the show isn’t resonating with me. (My first major crush in high school was a hockey player; I should write about that someday, although I have numerous times in fiction.) The show is stirring up shit on social media, though–some of the criticisms the show is getting is wild. My personal favorite is “hockey players don’t look that hot”–yes, their faces were be beaten up a bit more and they’d be missing some teeth, for sure–but seriously, why is it so hard for people to grasp the concept that it’s a romance? Romances, film or television or book or short story, aren’t accurate depictions of anyone’s reality. I don’t know why it is so hard for people to grasp that (although, in fairness, I am guilty of it myself from time to time) important, salient fact–and that ignorance is often masked in condescension; which is highly ironic. Condescending to (and about) a genre that you don’t understand is hardly a sign of your intellectual superiority. All genres deserve respect from writers outside of that genre, period. You’re not writing The Great Gatsby1 yourself, asshole.

I also finished going through my journals looking for notes on Chlorine during the Alabama-Georgia game, which was a lot of fun. It also made me realize there’s really no need for me to keep my papers and try to donate them to an archive (Tulane’s library was interested for one of their special collections almost two decades ago, but I never bothered getting around to it because I really didn’t care that much); all they really need or would want would be my back-up hard drive and my journals. It was kind of fun going through them, and I should more often because there’s a lot of good stuff in there about plotting and character and editing ideas and so forth. There’s also a lot of good ideas and fragments in there, too. I started keeping a journal in the mid-90s, and kind of got away from that at some point after moving to New Orleans. I started up again on New Year’s, I think in 2016. Paul and I had our annual lunch at Commander’s Palace with Jean and Gillian, and on the way back to the car afterward we stopped at Garden District Bookshop specifically for me to buy a journal so I could start keeping one again. I have been pretty consistent ever since then, and they are a fun record to revisit periodically. (I have my old ones around here somewhere, but I can never remember where they are.) It also gave me the answer to a question that has puzzled and confused other authors almost as long as I have been publishing: how do you write so fast? I don’t write fast, I type fast. Books and stories have existed in the corners of my mind for years in some cases before I actually write them, and have made notes and developed characters and titles and plots over many years before I organize them all and sit down to actually write the book. I don’t execute a novel from idea to characters to plot to write the whole thing in three months or so; I spend three months organizing it all while typing it all out–and in some cases, I’ve even started one before getting stuck and putting it to the side. In most cases, I am finishing a book in three months. (I have several novels on hand that are in some stage of completion, and I don’t even want to know how many novellas, short stories, and essays there are in the files.) They were started and thought out a long time before I actually write them.

Today’s goals are to get my bills caught up on paid for, running my errands, and proofing the typeset pages of the new book. I am making chicken white bean chili today (which should be delicious), and want to get some filing and organizing done. I am also going to gather all the Chlorine notes scanned in to the computer so I can start organizing them and working on the book. I also realized yesterday, as I selected and picked out the “noir” I’m going to try to read this month (through Twelfth Night, for the record) and realized that what I have considered to be noir all these years…well, I was incorrect; I was conflating hard-boiled with noir, and while they are very close to being the same and have things in common, there are more than enough differences to be entirely separate sub-genres. A book doesn’t even have to be a crime novel to be noir. Maybe it’s something I should write about for the newsletter, you know?

And on that note, I am heading into the spice mines on this gray, chilly day. It did rain for most of the day yesterday, which made for a very cozy day in my easy chair with Sparky in my lap and a blanket. Have a lovely Sunday, Constant Reader, and I’ll be back tomorrow.

As you can see, I have unlocked my Christmas hunk folder for the year.
  1. I used this book–which I loathe–as an example, because it’s often considered one of the great American novels. ↩︎

You Never Even Called Me By My Name

A gray and wet Friday morning here in New Orleans, and it looks to be rainy and wet all day and through tomorrow as well. I have a meeting this morning before I have to see my doctor (maintenance, no complains), after which I have to take Paul to an appointment in Metairie, and we’re stopping at Le Costco on the way home. I slept great last night–rain and cold and a pile of blankets always works– and feel really good and rested this morning. Sparky was a sweet little cuddle-bug this morning, too. It’s nice and warm in the apartment this morning, and my coffee is delightful. I wonder how tired I will be after Costco? I’ll report back on that tomorrow morning. It’s going to cost us a fortune today, too, because we’ve not been in almost a month. But I am very delighted and happy to spend our money at Costco–especially since MAGA is boycotting them yet again, which is, as always,

I lied yesterday morning, unintentionally. I felt both sleepy and tired when I was writing my entry, and my hips did ache a bit as I walked around and climbed the stairs, etc. However, once I’d showered, had a second cup of coffee, and something to eat…that all went away. I wasn’t tired at work–had no trouble staying current on everything–and I was able to come straight home from the office, where I finished the dishes and did still another load of laundry. Go figure, right? The answer is to take a shower when I am dragging when I get up–a lesson I need to learn on the days I am at home, for sure. I also ordered groceries last night, which were delivered. I am looking forward to making chili tomorrow! I did some more collecting of notes for Chlorine–I’ve never had all my notes on it all together in one place, and I think this is absolutely one hundred percent necessary to getting this draft done. It’s kind of fun, honestly, to go back through my journals and see all the notes for books and stories I was writing at the time and other ideas and notes and even essays I’ve started writing in them. I’ll spend some more time with the journals tonight, and probably will get the notes all scanned in the morning tomorrow. I am really excited to dive into writing a book with my full focus and my brain and body functioning properly; it’s been a very hot minute.

I started watching another episode of The American Revolution, but Paul came home shortly after I’d started it, and we watched some of the Grand Prix final for figure skating. I want to finish that at some point this weekend, and I am taking The Postman Always Rings Twice with me to the appointments to read. It’s only 102 pages, so I should be able to get finished with it this evening. I still haven’t totally decided on what my other reads for Noirmas Season will be, but I definitely need to read one of Eli Cranor’s latest; I am behind on him. I know I am going to tackle that Dorothy B. Hughes novel, The Fallen Sparrow, and there’s some other classics on my iPad I may tackle, too. It also dawned on me last night that by making this month about noir, I’ve not been using hunks in Christmas attire for the blog, so I’ll need to rectify that going forward. Just because I am reading noir for Christmas doesn’t mean I don’t enjoy Christmas!

I also maliciously smiled this morning about the cold rainy weather–welcome to New Orleans, ICE shitheads! It also is amusing to me that the charges against Luigi Mangione might actually be dismissed because of improper police conduct in their rush to show oligarchs they are more valuable and important than other American citizens. Good.

Sigh. The times in which we live.

And on that note, I am heading into the spice mines. I have dishes to put away and laundry to finish before my meeting. Have a lovely Friday, Constant Reader, and I’ll be back tomorrow morning.

Polk Salad Annie

That may be the name of the song, but I always thought it was “poke salad,” because you used pokeweed to make it. But I’ve also always had hearing issues, and have misheard (and mis-said) things almost my entire life before learning how wrong they were! The funny thing is, before the hearing aids, I was kind of ashamed of being unable to hear so I would never ask someone to repeat themselves; now that I have them, I have no problem with that? Strange, isn’t it?

I have to pack tonight when I get home because I want to get an early start tomorrow morning. I don’t like driving after dark, and with the time change it’ll start getting dark between four and five, and I lose a time zone hour once I cross the Georgia state line for a brief moment before catching I-75 in Chattanooga. I hope to sleep well again tonight, since the drive will most likely be exhausting. This is my first lengthy drive since being sick, and so I guess it will be indicative of how my recovery is going, won’t it? Plus, leaving early might help with traffic along the way. I can even load the car for the most part this evening as well, which is cool. I don’t know how much I will be here while I am up north this week, so bear with me; you may not see me again until this coming Sunday morning. I will miss the games on Sunday, but I can always check scores on my phone and I may get home in time to catch the tail end of Auburn-Alabama. LSU is at Oklahoma, so who knows how that will go and which team will show up in Norman. I don’t have a lot of confidence or hope in a team that just beat Western Kentucky by only three points at HOME. (It was actually kind of sad, especially for Senior Night. What a disaster this season turned out to be for my Tigers. Sigh. But I said they were overrated at the beginning of the season and guess what? I was right.)

I spent some time yesterday going through my journals to mark pages with Chlorine notes, and there were a lot. I only got through about five of them, but there was a lot of interesting notes and information and ideas for the story, and for the main character’s back story. I know, I know, I’ve been threatening to write this book for almost a decade, but one of the things I came to realize yesterday looking at the journals is how erratic my creative mind is and how all-over-the-map it can be. My journals serve many purposes; I like to write long-handed, for one thing, and somehow the mind-hand connection frees my mind to wander and create free-style, and it always works. It’s also kind of interesting to see how past novels and stories have developed. Sometimes I’ll write a story or a chapter fragment in long hand; the long hand freestyle thing has always worked for whenever I am stuck on something. I also learned a lot going through the journals looking for Chlorine notes; both story and character and situations. I also realized yesterday that the reason I’ve never really worked on it seriously was because I was very tied to that opening scene, and the original story I developed; but now I have realized that there was an enormous hole in the plot that cannot really be fixed without revising and rewriting the entire first three chapters, which I’ve been trying to fix and polish for years when it couldn’t be fixed; spending some time immersing myself in the book, by writing in my journal, has opened the entire thing up for me and I think I should be more than ready to get a first draft done by the end of the year. I’m actually excited, rather than intimidated, about writing it! I think feeling better physically, emotionally, and mentally has helped a lot, too. I spent a lot of time these past few years thinking that I might retire from writing…nah, I just wasn’t 100%!

I am also very excited to start listening to Laurie R. King’s O Jerusalem tomorrow in the car! It’s longer than the drive, so I am going to take the book with me to finish reading, along with my Donna Andrews novel to read while I am up there so I can listen to either her Christmas audiobook from last year, or A Letter of Mary by Laurie on the way home on Saturday. I am hoping to rest and relax and read and spend some nice time with Dad and my sister. It’ll be cold, of course, but I am not dreading it the way I usually do. I think I’ve finally made peace with colder weather? I blame this past January’s blizzard, really. It reminded me how nice it is to be safe and warm inside while the snow is coming down outside. Very, very cozy, and maybe the weather is kind of worth it for that kind of comfort? The older I get, the more I appreciate comfort. (Note to self: get new sheets.)

We watched some more of the final season of Solar Opposites, which I’m not enjoying as much as I did the earlier seasons…but I also watched them all in a binge, so was a lot more vested and it’s hard to get back into it after so long. It’s still insanely clever, though. We also watched Family Plan 2 so you don’t have to (the first one was cute and clever; the second went back to the well and it doesn’t play as well the second time around) and I have to ask again, how is Marky Mark a movie star? (I prefer to use his name from when he was a trouser-dropping “recording artist.”) He has no range at all, and all the promise he showed as a young actor in movies like Boogie Nights has been lost into a charmless “character” he plays over and over and over again, in action flick after action flick. Basically, he just shows up and cashes the paycheck. I do like Michelle Monaghan, though. It played while I was going through my journals; Paul kept falling asleep. Then we watched Devil in Disguise, and seriously? This is how serial killer mini-series or limited series or whatever they fuck they call them now should be done. Not glamorous, not visually beautiful, and the sexiness of the cast isn’t highlighted, but rather buried under period hair and clothing. The really get that 1970s accurately; it was almost triggering. I also liked that they aren’t glamourizing Gacy and are focusing, not just on him, but on selected victims and telling their stories along with his. (We had to stop watching the latest Ryan Murphy Monster season.)

I feel good this morning. I didn’t want to get up, but that wasn’t from wanting to sleep more, it was the warm comfort of the bed I didn’t want to leave. I am not tired or sore, and my hip joints feel pretty good, too. I am not in the clinic today, but I have an awful lot of things to get caught up on before I head home this afternoon, and a lot to do when I do get there, too. I’ll just have to avoid Sparky’s wiles and the lure of the easy chair–or remind myself to get up after resting and get it all done so I can leave tomorrow morning and not be concerned about coming home to a disaster area Saturday.

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

Help Me

Ah, the 4th of July. I already did my holiday post this morning, in which I put in words what I’ve been feeling about this country for a very long time, and I don’t think I’ve still managed to get a lot of it out of my system entirely yet. The state of the world is such that it’s both infuriating and terrifying at the same time, and thinking about it for too long inevitably always puts me into a bad mental state. I’m taking the day off from most everything–I’ll do chores and so forth, because I can’t just sit still for very long–but I want to go to the gym for a bit and I also want to spend some time reading; have an actual day off, you know, from the pressures and worries and cares of the every day world. So no news, no social media check-ins (other than blog posting; I am very behind on that, and more on that later), and seriously, how lovely to have one day when I can make the world go away.

Yesterday was an odd day, really. Having a three day work-week was already off-putting, and I could never remember what day it was all week, and I felt a bit off-balance. I did get some work done on the book, which was awesome, and I plan to do more of that this very weekend, thank you very much! It’s nice to feel excited about writing again, even as I fear that I am also letting time slip through my fingers. I have become very aware of the grains of sand running through my hourglass these days and it’s really not as grim or sad as other people always make it out to be when I mention it, you know? I always knew I would never have enough time to write all the ideas for stories and books that I wanted to; but always optimistically wrote the ideas down and dutifully recorded them for me to come back to someday. Going through the files–I still haven’t finished that, but I am hoping for this weekend, in all honesty–reminded me of a lot of things about myself and my writing and who I am as a writer, you know? Things like ideas that resurrected themselves as new ideas because I’d forgotten I already had the idea once before; book and story ideas that evolved and changed titles (“The Snow Globe” began life as “St. John’s Eve”); and various ideas and things that can actually be folded into the same story. It was also fun paging through my journals–I still need to put my hands on the old ones from the 90s–and seeing how some of the recent stuff took shape, too. So many, many ideas. But I’ve also made peace with the fact that some of these ideas will never see print, but I will never be able to stop having ideas until my brain stops functioning. The last thing I will probably do before passing out of this life will be scribbling an idea down on something handy, and then I will expire.

I feel good this morning. I feel rested and relaxed and I’m actually in a pretty decent mood. When I finish and post this, I am going to do some chores and get the downstairs picked up a bit, and I may even work on the shelves in the laundry room and purge some more books and free up that second shelf for storage, which is what I would absolutely love. I want to clean out my cabinets this weekend, too, and figure out what is a more efficient way for the kitchen to be set up. But it does, overall, look better than it has in years, which is terrifying when I think about it. How had I let everything slide for so damned long? How did I allow everything to just keep stacking up without doing anything about it? Sigh. I really do need to stop shaking my fist at Past Greg, seriously.

Remember how I said I was going to keep doing Pride posts through today? I’ve decided to say fuck that and continue writing about being gay in America, my own past as a gay man and what that was like, and gay influences on the culture. I cut back on that a lot over a decade ago, because I decided that my blog should just really show how I am a person and a writer like all of my heterosexual counterparts, who just happens to be gay. But I have a pulpit here, where I can educate a very small audience–or bring back memories for some of them–and I feel like I need to start doing that again. The truth is homophobes are never going to read my work, or this blog; why should I worry about offending people whose offense is inevitably due to internalized homophobia they may not even be aware of? It’s often surprising to see the blinders so many straight people are delighted to put on when it comes to queer people (“can’t we agree to disagree? Your existence is just a political agenda anyway”–literally eat ground glass, motherfucker).

Being unaware of your privilege doesn’t mean you don’t have any.

And on that note, I am going to go do my chores. Happy 4th, everyone and I may be back later.

Treasure Hiding

Monday and back to the office with me this morning, woo-hoo! Yesterday was kind of nice. It rained overnight and we had a couple of amazing thunderstorms in the morning which cooled everything off (for a quick moment) so I was able to cuddle up under my blankets with a cup of coffee and finished reading Megan Abbott’s amazing Beware the Woman (get a copy now and you can thank me later–I prefer cash), before doing some chores around the house and getting a handle on the kitchen/office mess situation. Yesterday afternoon around one I checked the temperature and it was a mere 78 degrees here. In July, in the afternoon. Madness, am I right? But it gradually started climbing again, as always, but it was a lovely respite from the brutality that has been this summer.

I also read a short story from one of the Alfred Hitchcock Presents, “Lady’s Man” by Ruth Chatterton, which I found interesting as it was nothing more than a little ghost story, set at a country home of none other than Noel Coward! I’m sure this must be the same Ruth Chatterton who’d been a film star in the 20s and 30s; a quick Google search answers the question that yes, the film star also was a writer! How delightful. The tale was told in a conversational style, as though Ms. Chatterton was making interesting conversation at a formal dinner, which made it really fun to read, even though the chills weren’t quite as pronounced as they were in some of the other stories I’ve read in these books. I do love revisiting these old anthologies and stories from another time.

I also spent some time going through my recent journals and marking pages with sticky notes that are applicable to things I am currently working on or thinking about going to work on. I usually brainstorm and think in my journals. It used to be just the act of writing something down was necessary for me to remember it later–which is why I never needed to really consult my notes in the Olden Days–but that is clearly no longer the case. Even writing stuff here in blog posts is no guarantee I will remember it later. It was also interesting because so much of my journal is just me scribbling, free associating names and titles then who the people are who got with both, quotes I like with attribution, and then the most bizarre things that literally make no sense at all; where did this thought come from? Is it original or did I see it somewhere and wrote it down? It’s always fun to see just how schizophrenic my creativity is when I don’t try to harness it. I actually wrote longhand in my journal last night while watching a documentary–I sometimes takes notes in case I want to blog about it later–and wound up writing several pages of a personal essay about my own experience going to Boys’ State in Kansas the summer I turned sixteen. (Yes, I was watching Boys’ State on Apple Plus, which was filmed at the Texas Boys’ State, which was interesting and well done, and a lot like I remembered it being all those years ago in a different state.) That evolved into me writing about always feeling like an outsider, observing from a slight remove, and went on for quite some time, rather indulgently, and I kind of was amused. There I was, feeling like I was creatively stifled and not able to write, yet writing in longhand in a journal, no less. It wasn’t fiction, of course, but it was still a creative expression, a free form exercise in stream of consciousness writing to see where my mind went–and inevitably, as always, I had to take the piss out of myself.

And that led to another page about my difficulties in taking myself seriously, and thus self-sabotaging myself and my career.

It truly is a wonder I have a career, or for that matter, even had one to begin with.

One thing that did come from that free form writing was a reiteration of something I think I may have posted here recently, that I should take just as much pride in my novels as I do in my published short stories. Sounds bizarre, doesn’t it, but my inner editor always wants to find and fix things in the novels, which inevitably leads to me wishing I could have another pass at it, and the reality is I will always feel like I should have taken another pass at a novel manuscript before it went to print. I need to get over that, or to at least keep it to myself and my journals rather than dragging my own work on my blog. I AM proud of my books, every single one of them, and every single one of them was the best book I was capable of writing at the time I wrote it. As I believe I continue to learn and grow as a writer the more I write, I will always think of my past work as something done when I wasn’t as mature a writer and was still learning because I am always learning. And hope to always continue learning and get better, not just as an author but as a person.

The older I get, the more I realize I don’t know, and how much I will never know. It’s kind of humbling, really.

I did decide what the next book I am going to write is going to be, and that’s a good thing. I was pretty sure of what it was going to be, because it’s in my head and needs to come out more than anything else at the moment–but there’s always something else nagging at the back of my mind saying write me write me! It has the potential to be very good, but I still need to figure some things out. I know how it starts and I know how it ends and I know the back story; I just don’t know the middle and how to get from Act One to the start of Act Three; I always struggle with the second act. I started writing it for a friend who was an acquiring editor, it was something I had been wanting to do for a while and he was interested in acquiring it once it was finished, or at least a first draft completed. So, while I was working on two other books at the same time, I was also taking one day every week and writing a three thousand word chapter and emailing it to him. I had completed Chapter Four and needed a transitional chapter that wasn’t boring or expository, so I had to put more thought into it than I had the previous four. This was last fall, when things started to get out of control in my personal life and with everything else, when I started falling behind on everything and my anxiety was out of control and I just didn’t have the headspace or creative energy to spare to figure out that chapter, so I stopped working on it.

But I never stopped thinking about it.

So, now I have to write it. I may continue to send it to him although he is no longer an acquiring editor, but he’s also a friend and I respect his opinion (he is remaining unnamed because I cannot say kind things about him publicly), so maybe I will. He was very encouraging, and sometimes I need a little bit of a push every now and then. I’ve also mentally worked out some of the kinks in those first chapters, too. I think it will be fun to write; I know I was enjoying it when I was working on it before, and it wasn’t like fuck, I don’t want to work on the structure and plot and meaning of this fucking thing, it was yeah, let’s figure this shit out.

That’s a good sign, methinks.

I’ve also decided my next read is going to be Kelly J. Ford’s The Hunt. I love Kelly and I love Kelly’s work, so I can’t wait to see what this is about. She has a truly masterful grasp of the rural South, and that voice! Oh, that authorial voice! She takes me back to my childhood summers in rural Alabama, shows those folks with a clear and unblinking eye, and then writes with language so beautifully and magnificently constructed that it makes me feel seen, home, and alive. I have some more fabulous books coming–what a summer for releases! New books to come from Laura Lippman and Angie Kim and Michael Koryta on top of all the treasures that have already been released this year? I’ve got Eryk Pruitt’s latest and Scott Von Doviak’s latest on their way, with a new Donna Andrews right on their heels. I need to stop slacking and get back to reading on top of everything else! Mon Dieu, how am I ever supposed to keep up?

There simply isn’t enough time in every day, is there?

There were also short stories in my journals–either the idea or the openings or an outline–that I’ve never transferred out or transcribed, which also needs to be done. God, there are so many short stories in progress…it’s daunting just thinking about it.

But it was a good weekend. I got some rest and I accomplished some things. I got better organized, with a short way to go, and am proceeding with plans to get everything back together again and start writing again, clearly and clear-headedly moving forward on something I’m really interested in writing, something I’ve wanted to write for a very long time–and it’s enormously satisfying knowing I am finally going to be working on it for real.

And on that note, I am heading into the spice mines. Have a lovely Monday, Constant Reader, and I may be back later. I tend to turn up like a bad penny here and there, now and again.

Throughout the Dark Months of April and May

Well, yesterday felt normal–as opposed to all the energy and the fabulous mood I was in on Monday, yesterday I felt more like the way I usually do on a midweek morning coming into the office. It was busy and we did have some odd and unusual issues, like we did on Monday, but it all worked out and I managed to get everything done and get out on time. I wasn’ tired when I got home, but there were men working on the house on our side of the building until about eight o’clock, playing (bizarre) music (choices) really loudly and of course, hammering and drilling and all those other power tool-esque things construction workers use. I’d intended to get some things done, but this successfully irritated me enough to make me lethargic. Then Scooter climbed into my lap and started purring and head-butting me and that was all it took; I was down for the evening. I did manage, however, to do a load of dishes so the evening wasn’t a complete waste. I feel more awake and alert and energetic this morning than I did yesterday, so that’s a step in the right direction, I think. Tomorrow I’ll be working from home, and trying to get caught up on the data entry and quality assurance stuff, as well as doing some yearly, on-line trainings about safety that are due (biohazard, fire prevention, HIPAA, etc.) so I’ll have a pretty full plate tomorrow, which is cool. I hope to spend some time with Megan Abbott’s Beware the Woman this weekend, and I also would like to get some more entries finished–I have a review of Carol Goodman’s marvelous The Seduction of Water to post, and I have more entries about my own books to write. and on and on and on.

We watched more of Red Rose on Netflix last night, and we’re really enjoying it. It’s a horror series about a deadly app teens have on their phones; it’s an interesting modern take on the horror trope of the haunted device, and a very clever use of cell phone technology to base a horror series on. We’ll probably finish it over the course of the weekend, we’re about halfway through with four more episodes to go.

I’m also getting better at figuring out where I am at in my life and getting a grasp on everything I am doing and what needs to be done going forward. I want to spend the rest of this month trying to get one of my in-progress manuscripts finished, or at the very least, a first draft finished. I also am going to start trying to pull together another short story collection, and I want to get these novellas finished and out of the way, too. I am also aware that is a far too ambitious plan for me; there’s no way I’d be able to get all that writing done in twenty-five days. I also have another Alabama book swirling around inside of my head; I keep thinking Beau Hackworth, Jake’s boyfriend in Bury Me in Shadows, deserves his own story and would be the best place for me to continue on with Corinth County tales; I have others in progress (two novellas, in fact, “Fireflies” and “A Holler Full of Kudzu”) and numerous short stories. I have one actually coming out in an anthology this fall, predicated around breaking the Father Brown rules for a mystery story–mine was “include a supernatural element,” natch–called “The Ditch” that I’m rather pleased with. I want to revise my old story “Whim of the Wind” again, too, because I think I’ve finally unlocked the key to solving the problem in the story (with a grateful not to Art Taylor, whose story “The Boy Detective and the Summer of 74”) but have never gotten around to actually, you know, making the changes to the story.

That story, “Whim of the Wind,” is uniquely special to me. After being told by my first creative writing professor that I would never be a published author and to “find another dream” sent me into a tailspin that resulted in my flunking out of college and putting off seriously pursuing writing as a vocation for over a decade (there were flashes of time when I’d put some effort into it, writing stories and so forth before giving it all up as pointless and impossible for me) I took creative writing again when I went to a junior college in California in an attempt to get my GPA up enough to allow me to re-enroll in the California State University system. We were allowed to take that class twice, so I took it in both fall and spring semesters. The first semester my stories were derivative and trying too hard, but the teacher was very encouraging, which I wasn’t used to, so I decided to take it again in the spring–he urged me to do so. One day in class we were talking about stories and structures and writing, and I just had this idea pop into my head and I started writing in my notebook. All throughout the rest of the class I kept writing, and I finished it when I got home that night. That story was “Whim of the Wind,” and not only did the teacher love it (he wrote on the first page, excellent, you should send this out which was a huge thrill for me. The class also loved it and didn’t critique it very much–there wasn’t anything negative anyone had to say about it. But the story was flawed; there was a strong flaw in its premise which inevitably always got the story kicked back from anywhere I may have submitted it; editors would even admit they loved the story but it was missing something–but no one has ever been able to tell me what the story needed…and please remember, what I turned in was a first draft, I’ve never rewritten the story because I didn’t know how–and it’s really one of those “kill your darlings” examples; I can’t change the opening paragraph because it’s poetic and beautifully written and…I can’t bring myself to make any changes to that, and I suspect that’s really what it needs. Maybe I’ll take another look at it this weekend.

I’ve also been going through my journals looking for things–ideas, story fragments, etc.–that I’ve forgotten about, and I must say there’s quite a lot of that. I’ve even started writing short stories in my journal that I never finished and they are just sitting there, minding their own business and waiting for me to remember them so I can finish them. It’s also interesting seeing what I write in those things, too–sometimes I just free-write, which is open it, take a pen and just start scribbling whatever pops into my head, which makes for a kind of interesting (to me) look at how my brain operates when free associating…I am sure some future psychoanalyst (or even current, for that matter) would look and see a need for medication if not multiple psychoses. I also free associate write when I am playing with ideas for stories or novels in progress, so that’s always interesting to see again later.

And on that note, I am heading into the spice mines. Have a lovely Thursday, Constant Reader, and I will be back with you later.

Joy To The World

The day after Christmas is always a bit on the weird side.

I decided to take yesterday off from the world, not looking at emails or social media or even trying to work. I mean, it was Christmas, and yes, I am behind on everything but sometimes recharging is necessary and needed and shouldn’t be questioned. Paul got me some lovely gifts, which was nice, and I made pulled turkey breast for dinner. We spent a lovely day basically hanging out together and enjoying each other’s company, which is all anyone can really ask for Christmas. Of course, that means I need to make up for yesterday today with the writing and the spice mines and I have to go back to work tomorrow (another short week, though, which is kind of nice); heavy heaving sigh. But the year is winding down and before you know it, it will be 2022; one week from today will be the second of the new year. Very weird, very weird indeed.

But while i may not have been typing words to put on paper, I was thinking about the book some more, and I have a very good idea of the proper direction to take it, so today when I get cracking (after getting properly caffeinated, of course) I should be able to bang out some work on it. I also was thinking about some other things–whenever I let my mind wander creatively, it’s never just about the current project; I just let it go in the directions it wants to go rather than where I want it to go, which is probably why I have so many folders filled with ideas and partials and incomplete things–but I also find that trying to rein in my creativity and focus it when it’s free-styling is inevitably a mistake because it just doesn’t work that way, alas; any attempt to control it inevitably means shutting it down completely. So while it can be tiring as my mind pinballs from bumper to bumper and flipper to flipper, sometimes it comes up with some serious gold, and therefore it’s all worthwhile.

Or at least so I think. I can never be completely sure, you know. I am rarely, if ever, the best judge of my own ideas and work.

But I am looking forward to diving back into the book this morning, and cleaning up the mess I left behind in my kitchen while preparing dinner last night. I am probably going to make sautéed shrimp tonight to serve over baked potatoes–a highly fattening dish I save for rare occasions (the recipe calls for bacon grease, butter, and heavy cream, in case you were wondering) and post-Christmas sort of sounds like the right night for that to be happening. Not sure what I will do for New Year’s next weekend–although I strongly suspect we will be finished OG Gossip Girl at long last by the end of that weekend. We are well onto season five now, with only season six’s half-season left when we finish out this one–and then we’ll have to go looking for something new to binge-watch. (We also have some shows to finish watching–The Sinner, for one, and of course there are some new shows that dropped while we were indulging ourselves in Gossip Girl) I also want to finish reading Vivien Chien’s book–I’m enjoying it a lot, but for whatever reason right now I am not in a reading phase, which is bitterly disappointing, but I am sure it also has to do with home-stretching the new manuscript–and I also found some more I need to put back in the TBR pile as I cleaned out a box of books from the storage space (I am still looking for those old journals, by the way; I want them for “Never Kiss a Stranger” research because those journals include the time period when I first began visiting New Orleans, and I’d like to remember things I’ve probably lost to the mists of time and old age that stand out from that time period; like trying to remember songs that played in the gay bars at that time since my character works in one).

It really does bother me that I have literally no idea where I stored those journals. I remember finding them, and I cannot believe I just put them back into a box and away again.

Which wasn’t really very smart of me. I know I didn’t want to go through them at the time–I really rarely enjoy revisiting old diaries and so forth because it’s more than a little embarrassing to read how immature I was, or how easily my feelings were hurt–in other words, what a drama fucking queen I used to be back in the day; but I wrote all those things down, at the very least, to try to process the feelings and why I felt the way I did without ever admitting things that I didn’t want to admit to myself were true; self-deception used to be a major factor in life, and essentially seeing how I deluded myself into thinking things isn’t exactly highly appealing to me at this time (or any time, for that matter)…but it would also be interesting to take a look at ideas I had for stories and books from back then; music I was liking and listening to; and of course my dreams that were expressed on those pages; even the books I was reading at the time.

And isn’t that always the way, really?

I also started, the other day, going through my old blog entries from earlier this year to remember what I was reading and what I was watching. I don’t really see much point in making a list of favorite reads and watches from the year; I would inevitably forget something that I really enjoyed, and it was a year of truly terrific reading for me. I read a lot of great books this past year, and we watched a lot of great television shows as well. It’s also an interesting journey is seeing what books I wanted to write this past year and never got around to doing; I never finished writing Chlorine’s first draft, or Where the Boys Die, or a new Scotty (the idea for which switched around an awful lot during the year, I might add; going from Twelfth Night Knavery to French Quarter Flambeaux to Mississippi River Mischief over the course of the second year of a pandemic) and so many short stories thought up and begun yet never finished…this, you see, is why I scoff when people say I’m prolific; there are so many pieces I’ve started writing but have never finished.

And on that note, I should probably head back into the spice mines for the day. Have a lovely Boxing Day or day after Christmas or Sunday or whatever meaning you might have assigned to this day.

The Night Before Christmas

It is now Christmas Eve–how lovely for everyone–and I do hope that everyone has the kind of holiday experience they want to have; whether it’s with actual family, chosen family, or just all alone and by yourself, may you have yourself the kind of day that will make you happy and relaxed and chilled out completely. I have to write again today–the joys of impending deadline–but that’s actually okay; I enjoy writing, so what better way for me to spend Christmas Eve? I’ll probably treat myself to a celebratory cocktail of some sort this evening; martini or margarita or Bloody Mary. I think Paul is going into the office for a few hours this afternoon anyway, so I can spend that time organizing and writing and cleaning and all of that fun stuff I get to do when Paul’s not home but I am. I was very creative last night, too–writing all kinds of notes about potential future projects and just letting my mind run a little wild; but that’s what happens when I allow my mind free rein to free-associate and start thinking of ideas. I even came up with a first last night; an idea for a gay romance called A Better Man, which might actually be fun to write. I also came up with a crime story about obsession (Missing White Woman, title gacked from Kellye Garrett on Twitter), and The Ones Who Walked Away, which is a title that could go in several different directions as far as length (short story, novel, novella) as well as what it’s about.

It’s actually kind of fun when I have the time to sit and think and come up with ideas and thoughts and so forth. The manuscript-in-progress is going to be a lot more fun now that I’ve taken some time to put some serious thought into it.

I am also taking a break from Blatant Self-Promotion because of the holiday. No one–well, certainly not me at any rate–wants Blatant Self-Promotion on Christmas Eve; hence a break from me, a respite as a holiday gift from me to you, Constant Reader (although making that decision has immediately caused that wretched little voice in my head to whisper this is why you don’t have a bigger career).

Well, to be fair it’s also a respite for me, since I hate doing it unless I can find a way to make it interesting.

And as the year winds down, I generally start looking back over the past year and thinking about the things I enjoyed, the things I didn’t, the progress made and the progress thwarted. But the pandemic years all seem to have run together somehow in my fevered brain; I don’t remember when I read a particular book or watched a particular movie or television show from the last two years. I also read so many damned good books and watched so much great entertainment (series and films) on my television that my picking some as highlights for the year would be incredibly, incredibly difficult–AND I would undoubtedly miss some. It’s also difficult for me to pick out a favorite (except Ted Lasso) of anything; I enjoyed so many different things for so many different reasons.

Although it would be interesting to go back and reread my blog entries from this same time last year. I know I was trying to get Bury Me in Shadows ready for submission at this time last year–one accomplishment of this past year was getting two books finished and turned in for publication, which was a big step past the previous year; my last book, Royal Street Reveillon, was released in the fall of 2019, so there was literally nothing from me in 2020 other than short stories here and there–and I cannot remember which ones, where and when, for that matter, either; I keep thinking, for example, that “The Dreadful Scott Decision” came out in The Faking of the President earlier this year, but it was actually last year. I think my Sherlock Holmes story and some others came out this past year, but it’s not something I’d be willing to testify about under oath, either. I do hate when that happens.

I’ve also been obsessively trying to locate two things (it’s actually more, but I am grouping many into one): several years back, while going through boxes, I found my old journals from back in the day, which actually inspired me to buy another one and start carrying one with me again (which has been wonderful), but I also don’t remember what I did with them so I’ve been trying to find them again. The other thing I am trying to find is a copy of an essay I wrote on the train from Florence to Venice (or vice versa). It was one of those “letters to myself at age sixteen”, and the other day I was trying to get a better handle on all the essays I’ve written over the years so I can compile them all into one (or more) collections; the fitness columns and essays on writing alone could probably be their own collections. Anyway, I remember having to write it on my laptop on the train–either to or from Venice, I honestly don’t remember, but I do think it was on the way–and it got a lot of engagement on social media, I do remember that but I can’t find a copy of the essay itself anywhere. It’s entirely possible it is one of those things that got lost over the years, and I also don’t remember what I called the file; but I am sure I saved it somewhere….only now I can’t find it and have been obsessively searching for it and realizing at the same time how messy and sloppy my computer files and all the back-ups actually are. I mean, neither thing (journals or essay) are particularly imperative that I put my hands on them immediately, but at the same time it’s really annoying and frustrating and I feel the obsessive side of my personality trying to come out.

So, I will probably spend some time looking for both at some point today–most likely when I am stuck on the book while writing.

And on that note, I am going to head into the spice mines. Have a lovely Christmas Eve, Constant Reader, whatever you are celebrating or not celebrating, and I will speak with you tomorrow.