And here we are at a manic Monday yet again, and shortly I will be heading into the office for yet another exciting week of the day job. Hurray and huzzah? I slept really well on Saturday night, getting up just after seven yesterday despite not going to bed until almost midnight; I found myself reading some things Saturday during the games that I shouldn’t have started–one of them being Queen Margot by Alexandre Dumas; I have the ebook–and I was also reading legends and stories about Louisiana’s past as well as Alabama’s; I have an ebook called Warrior Mountains Folklore: An Oral History by Rickey Butch Walker (which is an Alabama name if I’ve ever heard one); which isn’t necessarily about the Alabama county I’m from, but the ones directly north, including notorious Winston County, which contains the Bankhead National Forest. It also tells stories of the indigenous people of the area, and reminded me that Tuscaloosa actually is the Creek words for “black warrior,” meaning the Black Warrior River is actually the Tuscaloosa (tusca loosa); this will all go into the construction of my fictional Alabama county, which is ongoing. (And yes, the irony that one of the greatest–if not the greatest–college football programs is in a town named Black Warrior in the native tongue is hilarious.)
(It has occurred to me that I don’t necessarily have to connect all of my Alabama stories just as I don’t need to connect all my Kansas stories–which I realized while writing #shedeservedit–which was kind of freeing. I need to think in terms of multiverses rather than one single interconnected universe with my writing, don’t I? It certainly makes things easier than trying to keep the continuity and so forth going.)
Anyway, I am sure my Alabama just-for-fun research will undoubtedly pay dividends in future writing, no doubt. I also have been having ideas for more stories set there; I may give Jake’s boyfriend Beau his own story at some point; I keep going back to the legend of the Blackwood witch from antebellum/early statehood days, because the witch story is one I’ve always wanted to tell. Beau, being an archaeology major with a minor in Alabama History, is just the perfect person to tell the story of the witch I’ve always wanted to tell. But is it weird to have another vengeful spirit in the woods behind the Blackwood place, and the Civil War ruins? Or could it be tied to the lost family cemetery, still out there in the woods somewhere? As you can tell, I’ve been thinking about it lately.
I managed about a little more than twenty-five hundred words on the new Valerie yesterday, which felt great to do, really. I wanted to write some more on the Jem sequel, too, but after finishing the Valerie chapter I just felt mentally fatigued. I’m not used to writing this much in a short period of time anymore (just over an hour or so) and it’s going to take me a while to get back up to the proper writing speed I cannot maintain year-round. But it felt great to be creating again, and I do love the plot of this book. I also spent some quality time with Shawn Cosby’s marvelous All the Sinners Bleed, which is going in a direction I did not see coming and one that I am really enjoying. Shawn is such a master story-teller! I can’t wait to finish this so I can write about it–and I hope I finish it in time to read Lou Berney’s new one before I switch to October Halloween Horror Month. I think I may try out a Grady Hendrix novel for one of my horror reads and of course, I am terribly behind on Stephen King, and there are also some other lovely horror novels and collections in my piles of books to be read that could make for a fun reading month: Stephen Graham Jones, Silvia Moreno-Garcia, Paul Tremblay, Christopher Golden, Sarah Pearse, and Katrina Monroe, among so many others–I need to get back into the habit of reading for at least an hour every day. The only way to get through all the books i want to read is to make a daily time allowance for reading and stick to it.
After the abysmally disappointing Saints game, I went back to my easy chair and rather than delving back into Shawn’s book, I decided to start reading Jackson Square Jazz, the finished and published edition, to get a better handle on the story again. It’s been a long time, and I knew it had to do with a young figure skater, the Napoleon death mask, and the Cabildo fire, but not really much beyond that–although I think it’s actually the book where Scotty is in his first canonical car accident. Again, I am distant enough from it now not to immediate go into editing mode as I read it–ironic, since I need to re-edit it–and just read it. I really need to stop being so hard on myself. I know I’ve already made great strides in that direction, and I like my new positive attitude toward writing and publishing. I think analyzing why I am so hard on myself, recognizing the mentality I defaulted to when reading my work meant needing to flip a switch in my brain and going into a different mode other than editorial and doing it consciously makes a lot of difference. I was pleased rereading my short story collection, and was pretty pleased with rereading Jackson Square Jazz, particularly since it’s an early book in my canon and it’s been over twenty years since I wrote it.
(It’s kind of awe-inspiring and terrifying at the same time to realize just how long I’ve been doing this. Bill Clinton was president when I signed my first book contract.)
Well, that made me feel rather elderly.
I slept super-well last night, too. I was very tired and falling asleep in my chair, so I went to bed around nine and only woke up once, around two, and then woke up again half an hour before the alarm (as usual). Hopefully, I will not be too tired to function later today.
And on those two rather sad trombone notes, I am heading back into the spice mines. Have a lovely Monday, Constant Reader, and I will be back before you know it.
One of the things I’ve been thinking about lately is how we don’t really have a Louisiana crime writer who explores and illuminates the damage we are doing to the ecosystem and environmentalism of the state the way John D. Macdonald infused many of his Florida novels with so frequently. Condominium, published in the 1980’s, is a stinging indictment of crooked developers and corrupt politicians putting up massive condominium buildings along the coastline of Florida, despite the damage they do to the environment, all in the name of a quick buck. I have been thinking about this because I spent a lot of time in the panhandle in the 1970s, back before Panama City Beach developed into what it is now. I’ve not been back there since 1980, at the latest; but just looking at Google Earth images it’s horrifying how different and over-developed that whole area has become. (I was looking at the images because I was thinking about setting a book along the Redneck Riviera/Baja Alabama/Emerald Coast/Miracle Strip, whichever name you use for the region.) Louisiana, nicknamed “Sportsmen’s Paradise” because of the abundant fish and game and the stunning natural beauty of the state, has pretty much spent the last hundred or so years (at least) destroying and despoiling the natural resources of the state of Louisiana, killing off wildlife species while introducing new invasive ones–and don’t even get me started on Cancer Alley, that stretch of the river between New Orleans and Baton Rouge lined with petrochemical plants parked next to poor, mostly Black communities that have, surprisingly enough, large instances of cancers in the residents. Now the level of the river is so low that it can’t keep the Gulf water pushed down, and the salty water is making its way up the river and intruding into our drinking water supply here in southeastern Louisiana. I’m sure the loss of so much of the wetlands to ensure oil company profits hasn’t affected this in any way, shape or form. There’s a really good environmental thriller to be written about Louisiana (if not more), and I think maybe part of the problem in writing about the destruction of Louisiana in the name of unfettered greed is that I don’t feel knowledgeable enough on the subject to tackle it, nor do I have the time to spend on the research necessary.
It’s really disappointing to me that James Michener never wrote one of his two thousand page plus books about Louisiana. Louisiana history, no offense, is a lot more interesting than Texas’.
And Sportsmen’s Paradise is a great title for a book about Louisiana’s environmental disasters.
I suppose I should just go ahead and do it, regardless of how difficult and long and tedious the process may be. I also think part of the reason I’ve resisted this aspect of writing about Louisiana is because no matter how dark my books may get, I always want justice to be done in some way and to end the book with some sort of hope; there literally is no hope for the future of Louisiana because our politicians are all too greedy and corrupt and only focused on the now rather than the future, no matter how much they beat the “but the children!” drum publicly to fool those incapable of deeper thought. There have been so many environmental disasters in Louisiana over the nearly three decades I’ve lived here I can’t remember them all; and yes, I definitely count boil water advisories in that, too. There was the sinkhole at Bayou Corne (anyone remember that?) and of course Deepwater Horizon, whose true impact and the damage it wrought on the Gulf and the coastline will not be fully known for generations.
The one consistent thing throughout Louisiana’s history has been the entrenched systemic political corruption. I have written about that.
I’ve also been thinking a lot about Jackson Square Jazz, as I get into this revision, and remembering why I wrote it and what I was trying to say within the book; there was a thread in it that ties directly into the new one, and there are also some thematic commonalities with S. A. Cosby’s All the Sinners Bleed, which I am really enjoying reading. Shawn is such an extraordinary writer, with a gift not only for language but character, dialogue, setting and story; the complete deal, as it were, and definitely is going to be considered one of the definitive crime writers of this new generation of exceptional talent that has risen over the last few years. I am going to spend some more time with Shawn’s book this morning, too; I am really enjoying it and wanting to see where it goes and how it all ends. I also have the new Lou Berney on deck, and Lou’s books are always high-quality, clever, and engaging.
College football was interesting yesterday. My Tigers prevailed in a three-point nail-biter against Arkansas in Tiger Stadium 34-31, running the clock out and kicking the winning field goal on the last play of the game. Paul and I were stunned, as was the crowd in the stadium..,and then I laughed. “LSU fans aren’t used to smart clock management in tight games,” I observed, and Paul started laughing with me because the crowd in the stadium didn’t know how to react to the end of the game either. It almost seemed ant-climactic rather than exciting…how many games have we lost this century because of poor clock management skills displayed by the coaching staff? So it was lovely, for once, to see the Tigers play smart at the end of a game for a change. Alabama finally looked like Alabama for the first time this season–but only in the second half as they iced Mississippi. LSU now has to play Mississippi in Oxford next weekend; it’ll be interesting to see how LSU stacks up against our old Magnolia Bowl foe. Colorado finally lost, which brought out all the racist college football fans on social media. The Texas A&M-Auburn game was just sloppy, ugly and unimpressive, while Mississippi State fell to South Carolina. But the big game of the day lived up to its billing–Ohio State v. Notre Dame in South Bend, with the Buckeyes scoring the winning touchdown on the literal last play of the game, 17-14. I literally only saw the closing minutes of the game, switching over once the LSU game concluded. The Saints play at noon today at Green Bay, so the grocery run I need to make will happen around that time–no fool me; everyone knows the best time to make groceries is during a Saints game here.
Yesterday was pretty relaxing, over all; a lovely day for the weekend and a restful and nice one, despite the stress of the LSU game. I’ll probably have the Saints game on in the background because it’s too anxiety-making to watch the games. (I have yet to learn how to control the anxiety during a game; it was certainly there last night and while I tried very hard not to get negative during the game, I could feel the adrenaline spiking and my heart rate going up, but I managed to keep my mind from spiraling and going super-dark as well not getting overly emotional It is, after all, just a football game and LSU football success isn’t necessary for my mental well-being.)
My goals for today are to read Shawn’s book for a few hours, get cleaned up and make a grocery run; while finishing the first chapters of the new Valerie and Jem books (tentatively titled, thus far, The House of the Seven Grables and You Gone, Girl) and also wanting to do some short story work as well, which is always fun. This Friday I am getting fitted for my new teeth (hurray!) and I have also reached the point where I can eat and enjoy noodles, so yesterday I made box mac’n’cheese (not Kraft, but one that came from the refrigerated section and simply needed microwaving and stirring; it wasn’t bad, either). Tonight I am going to make ravioli for dinner; we’ll see how that goes, although I am sure I won’t be able to eat any garlic bread. (I am able to eat Cheese Puffs, though.) I really want a burger, more than anything else. We are also making a trip to the SPCA to adopt a cat this coming Friday, which is perhaps the most exciting thing of all! I’ve really missed having a cat; they are such darling animals, and of course we want to get another ginger boy.
And on that note, I think I am going to head into the spice mines. Have a lovely Sunday, Constant Reader, and I’ll be back–if not later, than tomorrow.
I’ve been toying with an idea for an essay for a while. It began as a blog post, but as I worked on it I realized it might be too long for a blog entry, were I to cover the entire scope of the issue even in abstract form. I moved it from here into a Word document yesterday, which may or may not mean something bigger in store for it than simply a blog entry. I don’t know. It will probably wind up here at some point as one of those long rambling things I do from time to time when I feel passionately about something. Consider that your warning. I’ve been thinking about masculinity a lot lately–it’s been an albatross hung around my neck since I was a child (“Boys don’t play with dolls! Boys don’t read Nancy Drew!”) and after reading so many bad takes about how “men are in crisis”–which basically boil down to an inability to adapt to cultural and societal change that is so intense that they resist such adaptation violently–I started thinking about masculinity and what it means to be a man; if it means anything, really. It’s probably too important an issue for me to take on in a personal essay, but personal essays are supposed to be revealing, and no one expects me to have an encyclopedic knowledge of everything ever written about American masculinity, and to discuss it; thinking I can’t write something for whatever reason is self-sabotage of the worst kind, and something I am guilty of, over and over, throughout my life and career.
And yes, self-sabotage is 100% a by-product of my anxiety.
I also have Justin Baldoni’s book about masculinity, Man Enough, which is also an exploration of masculinity. Baldoni played the incredibly hot and sexy father of Jane the Virgin’s baby, and so as a gorgeous male actor/sex symbol, he has some gravitas to speak on the subject. I’m looking forward to cycling around to his book, once I finish my reread of a Charlemagne biography I really enjoy. I also spent some more time with Shawn’s All the Sinners Bleed, which I am liking and savoring as I go–and can’t wait to spend some more time with it today. When I finish, Lou Berney’s Dark Ride has preempted everyone and been moved to the top of the TBR pile. It’s so lovely having so many great options of what to read next. I also think once October rolls around I am going to read only horror that month, in honor of the season–so I need to finish Shawn and Lou’s books before the month turns.
It also occurs to me that many of my books–unbeknownst to me–have explored the topic of masculinity in great detail already.
I slept really well last night, and only got up once. Ironically once I did wake up, I thought wow you really slept late and then saw it was quarter past seven on my alarm. I guess how it feels matters more than how long it actually was, and what truly matters is that I woke up feeling rested and relaxed and ready for my coffee this morning. I am debating right now whether I want to take the books to the library sale and the beads to the donor bins as well s make a slight grocery run–but am leaning towards not making the trip outside the house. I don’t really need anything from the store until Monday at the earliest, and the boxes of books and beads are out of the way and not bothering anyone, let alone my need for order and open space in the living room. I also want to work on some writing today before the games, so maybe leaving the house today isn’t in the cards–or am I just being lazy? It’s definitely possible that laziness and procrastination and my tendency to self-sabotage is what is really going on here. It’s possible. I do tend to put things off I consider unpleasant (and by unpleasant, I mean have to put some effort into it)…
LSU plays Arkansas tonight in Death Valley, and tonight we’ll find out two things: basically, how good either time is. It’s hard to say this early in the season how much quality your wins and losses have; the Florida State-Clemson game today will impact how good the LSU loss to the Seminoles was, and of course we aren’t sure how good Mississippi State is, so we don’t know if that was a quality win yet or not. Arkansas lost to BYU last weekend, so there’s also no telling how good they may or may not be, either. The whole conference seems to be down this year, but a tight win for Georgia can be shaken off as meaningless this early, and Alabama may bounce back; a Nick Saban coached Alabama team has never lost more than three games in a season since 2010 and only twice overall; sure, they looked unimpressive against USF and lost badly to Texas in Tuscaloosa, but does that mean Alabama isn’t going to rebound and is destined for a bad season? No, I don’t think so. Love them or hate them, Alabama consistently wins, and an early season loss means nothing to their program. Sure, LSU could run the table, win the West and potentially even the conference title game and make it to the play-offs; but they have to run the table on a schedule filled with landmines, including both Alabama and a rebuilding Auburn as well as the always hated Florida Gators. There are some great games today, which is why I want to spend some time reading Shawn’s book this morning before the games start, and I plan on rereading and revising Jackson Square Jazz during the games today.
And of course, there’s always filing and organizing to be done. I have seriously messed up my filing system so thoroughly and completely that it’s going to require a major overhaul to begin with, but I also have to think about putting together a new and workable system that will be easier to maintain than this haphazard way I’ve been doing things–and of course the computer files are an utter disaster as well. Heavy sigh.
I’ve been doing a lot more research (or rather, falling into research black holes on the web) about New Orleans during the decade of the 1910’s. I am definitely going to write a Sherlock pastiche for the Bouchercon anthology–which of course means I will most likely be rejected. Perhaps a Sherlockian-type character, and if they turn it down I can simply turn him into Sherlock and toss the story into my short story collection? I need to finish the revisions of “Whim of the Wind” and finish a draft of “Parlor Tricks,” which will probably go into that collection as well. What particularly interests me now is “Manila Village,” a settlement of Filipinos on Barataria Bay, settled by native Filipinos who were forced to serve in the Spanish navy and escaped to Louisiana. There’s still a strong Filipino-American community here (which I actually didn’t know before falling into this wormhole of research), and I do feel that Holmes, living in New Orleans in that decade, would probably embrace them and their culture. (I also need to research the Isleños; descendants of the Canary Islanders who settled here.) New Orleans was also dramatically different geographically back then; the New Basin Canal was still there, for one thing, and I am not entirely sure when the Carondelet Canal (also called the Old Basin Canal) was filled in, but it came right up next to Congo Square; the streets in the Quarter were either dirt or cobblestone, and the lower part of the neighborhood had been almost entirely taken over by Italian immigrants.
I’ve also got strong starts of first chapters for another Jem book (sequel to Death Drop) and another Valerie (sequel to A Streetcar Named Murder); so there’s plenty of writing to be done this weekend as well. I’m not feeling overwhelmed by any or all of this writing that must be worked on and done; this morning I literally feel like all I need to do is roll up my sleeves and dive into the word documents head first, which is a great way to feel.
And on that note, it’s spice mine time this morning. Have a great Saturday and I’ll probably check in with you again later.
Yesterday was unpleasant, if I’m going to be completely honest; almost like Mercury was in retrograde already (it isn’t yet, but yesterday felt like an audition, seriously). Things just went wrong all fucking day.
I should have headed back into the house yesterday morning when I ran into our landlady on the street outside as I was leaving and she let me know that the last of the herd, our last surviving outdoor cat, Tiger, died over the weekend. From that moment on the day’s energy had perceptively shifted and negativity and chaos were loosed upon the world–or at least at the office or in my general vicinity. As I drove to work, I was contemplating the news I’d seen about the red fire alert Louisiana is currently in; in other words, we’re in a drought and it’s been hotter than Channing Tatum covered in baby oil, so if anything catches fire…while California was experiencing tropical weather. By the time I got to the office it already felt like the day was going to be wretched, and it really was. That’s all I will say about that, but it was one of those days where if there’s a flaw in the system, it was going to become obvious to us all. By the time I got the mail on the way home from work I was tired and over it…and of course had my annual birthday note with a check…but just from Dad. So by the time I got home from work I was done with it all. I walked into the house, moved the laundry from the washer to the dryer, shed my clothes and tossed them in the washer, and went upstairs to take a shower and wash the stench of just in general bad energy day off me. The shower worked wonders…and felt a million times better (which wasn’t difficult, frankly) and then my OCD kicked in and I started trying to like and say thank you to everyone who’s wished me a happy birthday, but let’s be honest, Facebook has sucked for users for quite some time. Now I have to keep asking it to “load more” all the time, and once it gets to a certain point–usually when I have the “add more” down to less than two hundred, it crashes and I have to reload and start from the beginning and it only took that to happen twice for me to say fuck it you posted an in general thanks to everyone so post another one and be done with it and that is precisely what I did.
I also unloaded the dishwasher and did another load. The excitement, as you can tell, never stops or lets up around here.
But I want to make a fresh start to this week. I know Mercury is going into retrograde around the 25th. This is the one star/astrology thing I pay attention to because things always do seem to go somewhat haywire when Mercury is in retrograde. Then again, that could also be simply coincidence; things do go haywire all the time, or at least they do in my life experience. But I want to reboot the week, control-alt-restart, and shake it off. I think there’s always been a weird energy always associated around my birthday for most of my life, which is also why I tend to not make a big deal out of it. But that’s past and I want this to be a good week. I have a lot to do and it’s going to be hectic, as always, but I have to stay focused and not get sidetracked, which is frighteningly easier to have happen the older I get. I don’t want this to be a negative week, of drudgery and slogging through, praying for the relief of the weekend to finally arrive. I know I’ve been putting off diving into Chapter Six of the book because I’m not exactly sure what to write there, but that’s just laziness coupled with cowardice–fear of doing work I won’t be able to use as well as fear of getting off track with the plot. But I need to follow the advice I always give other writers–if it really comes down to it, fucking write your way out of it. Once you start, something will happen and you’ll end up going somewhere–and any progress, even if it ends up not being usable, is always one thousand times better than remaining stationary, because you can possibly slide back, too.
I slept great last night and feel more rested and relaxed–and alert–then I did yesterday. A good night’s sleep always helps and always makes me feel better in the morning. I really should shower every day when I get home from work and wash the day away, start a new evening fresh and exciting. Hopefully when I get home tonight I’ll be in the mood to get some writing done–it’s been far, far too long since I did any writing, seriously, and I really need to get back to it, heat advisory and August doldrums be damned. Who knows? It’s always a crapshoot, frankly. I can’t believe at this time next week I’ll be packing for Bouchercon. I have an eye appointment at 10:20 the same day I fly out–my flight is at like 1:30, so there’s plenty of time, and I can order more new glasses from Zenni while I am in San Diego. Tomorrow is the orthopedic surgeon appointment (hurray!) and of course, all my medical shit starts happening the week I return from the coast.
We did get some rain yesterday, and I was wondering if that may have effected the fire alert, but I don’t remember where I saw the original alert, either. I think it was an email? But in checking the weather looking for that, I saw that the three storms currently in or near either the Gulf or the Caribbean Sea pose no threat to Louisiana, at least not so far. It looks like a tropical storm will be hitting the south Texas coast/Rio Grande valley sometime relatively soon, and there are two more potential systems in the Atlantic, too. Yay.
But I am hoping that it will be a good day today and I can make some progress on things. I’ll need to stop on the way home to get the mail and some groceries (not much) and then come home to write and maybe do some cleaning and organizing around the kitchen.
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 never really meant to write a vampire story. For one thing, Poppy Z. Brite and Anne Rice had already done the New Orleans vampire story and set the bar super-high for anyone else wishing to write about vampires in New Orleans; Charlaine Harris also kind of cornered the market on Louisiana supernatural novels, too. It really seemed cliché to do New Orleans vampires, and I never would have, had I not been asked, and offered a lot of money, to do so. I make no bones about writing for money; if that renders me an unreadable hack, so be it.
I was initially asked to write a New Orleans vampire novella for a collection of four to be called Midnight Thirsts, which Kensington was publishing. Once I signed the contract and got paid half the advance, I decided to adapt a vampire short story I’d written, probably in or around 1997 or 1998, called “The Nightwatchers”; the main character was a young wannabe actress with a lot of talent but a lot of insecurity, who discovers that the reason she hasn’t been getting good roles in her theater company is because the woman who does is fucking the director. The story wasn’t good–she is easy prey for a vampire looking for a companion, who kills the director and the competition actress before turning her–but there was some lovely stuff about the French Quarter in the fog and her crumbling apartment–this was when you could still get a decent enough apartment in a crumbling old building in the Quarter for a price that seems unbelievable and unrealistic today–that I thought I could use. I also like the title, and as is my wont, when I started world-building and creating, I went overboard on back story. There were two point of view characters; the main, Philip Rutledge, who works as an escort, and his best friend Rachel, an aspiring singer who works in a coffee shop on Frenchmen Street, as well as a third; an older man who is a “nightwatcher,” member of an ancient society that reins in supernatural threats to humanity all the while keeping them in the dark about the reality of supernatural creatures and beings in the world. He has followed a rogue vampire to New Orleans, who has set his sights on Philip. I left the ending open, because I thought there was more story–if not a book, if not an entire series–in this idea. I decided I was going to write the vampire novel after finishing Mardi Gras Mambo…which wound up being delayed over a year. Then Katrina happened, and by the time I was ready to write about vampires again, too much time had gone by, alas. But they were doing another collection of vampire novellas, and asked me to do a Todd Gregory story for them (they had started publishing the Todd Gregory fraternity novels by this time), and that story became the novella “Blood on the Moon.” But rather than starting fresh, I used the same structure and world I’d created with “The Nightwatchers”–and tied it into the fraternity novel world as well, making the main character a member of the fraternity’s University of Mississippi chapter, visiting New Orleans for Carnival and winding up getting turned (it’s a longer, more complicated story than that, but that’s the bottom line). I brought Rachel and the old man from “The Nightwatchers” back–and when I was doing the anthology Blood Sacraments, I wrote a short story “Bloodletting”, that basically picked up where “Blood on the Moon” left off.
So, when Kensington asked for an erotic vampire novel rather than another fraternity book, I decided to use “Bloodletting” as the first chapter and build on the story from there, also using “Blood on the Moon” as the foundational story and the supernatural world I’d created for “The Nightwatchers.” This was to serve as an introductory work to a new supernatural Todd Gregory series.
It’s working title was A Vampire’s Heart. The powers that be didn’t like that title, thinking it sounded more like a romance novel title (which wasn’t wrong), and suggested Need, which was a recurring theme in the book.
And I really loved the cover.
The damp air was thick with the scent of blood.
It had been days since I had last fed, and the desire was gnawing at my insides. I stood up, and my eyes focused on a young man walking a bicycle in front of the cathedral. He was talking on a cell phone, his face animated and agitated. He was wearing a T-shirt that read Who Dat Say They Gonna Beat Dem Saints? and a pair of ratty old paint-spattered jeans cut off at the knees. There was a tattoo of Tweetybird on his right calf, and another indistinguishable one on his left forearm. His hair was dark, combed to a peak in the center of his head, and his face was flushed. He stopped walking, his voice getting louder and louder as his face got darker.
I could smell his blood. I could almost hear his beating heart.
I could see the pulsing vein in his neck, beckoning me forward.
The sun was setting, and the lights around Jackson Square were starting to come on. The tarot card readers were folding up their tables, ready to disappear into the night. The band playing in front of the cathedral was putting their instruments away. The artists who hung their work on the iron fence around the park were long gone, as were the living statues. The square, so teeming with life just a short hour earlier, was emptying of people, and the setting sun was taking the warmth with it as it slowly disappeared in the west. The cold breeze coming from the river ruffled my hair a bit as I watched the young man with the bicycle. He started wheeling the bicycle forward again, still talking on the phone. He reached the concrete ramp leading up to Chartres Street. He stopped just as he reached the street, and I focused my hearing as he became more agitated. What do you want me to say? You’re just being a bitch, and anything I say you’re just going to turn around on me.
I felt the burning inside.
Desire was turning into need.
I knew it was best to satisfy the desire before it became need. I could feel the knots of pain from deprivation forming behind each of my temples and knew it was almost too late. I shouldn’t have let it go this long, but I wanted to test my limits, see how long I could put off the hunger. I’d been taught to feed daily, which would keep the hunger under control and keep me out of danger.
Need was dangerous. Need led a vampire to take risks he wouldn’t take ordinarily. And risks could lead to exposure, to a painful death.
You see why they suggested we rename it Need? That opening pretty much says it all.
I had never really put a lot of thought into writing about vampires, in all honesty. To date, I have only published two novellas, one short story, and the novel, of course, but while I was writing Need that world began to expand and grow in my head as I worked on the story. I wanted to tie both “The Nightwatchers” and “Blood on the Moon” together, with Need as the continuation, so I brought back both Rachel and Nigel from the former, while keeping Cord from the latter as the main character. Cord Logan (how is that for a gay porn star name) was, despite being young in terms of being a vampire, quite powerful and growing in his power exponentially by the day. Headstrong, he’d broken away from the coven of vampires that turned him during Carnival, without learning everything he needed to learn first. What he didn’t know–and his former coven also didn’t–was that because of the circumstances involved in his own turning–when a male witch also tried to steal his power from him, he inadvertently wound up transferring his own power to Cord, who was then turned into a vampire to save his own life. This combination of witch/vampire is actually quite dangerous–as are any vampires Cord himself might create, which was the entire problem he faced in the story “Bloodletting” and didn’t understand.
The Supreme Council wants Cord summarily executed, but Nigel wants to keep him alive, to study and learn from, as well as to try teaching him how to control his powers. For me, Need was the introductory tale to a much longer story, where I’d be able to bring in vampires and shifters and witches and faeries and pretty much every kind of supernatural being. The next book was going to be called Desire, and every book was going to have a one-word title. I had a lot of fun with writing Need, and was really getting excited and writing lots of note for Desire…but the book didn’t do very well. It did okay, but not in the kind of numbers that would make a sequel a no-brained, and by then I had already moved on to writing the young adult books. The reviews weren’t great, either–but I never really care or pay much attention to them. The real problem is that there were sex scenes, and I don’t write the kind of gay sex scenes people want to read anymore. Mine are physical, lots of sweats and smells and experiencing how it feels and so on…most people want the sex scenes to be more esoteric and romantic and sweet.
I don’t think I’ve ever had sweet, romantic sex. I’ve certainly never written it.
Every once in a while, when I am writing something more along the lines of horror or with a supernatural tones, I remember my vampires and the world I created for them with a slight ping of sadness.
Maybe someday I’ll write Desire, but it’s highly unlikely at this point.
Sunday and the midpoint of the holiday weekend, as New Orleans swelters in what is, even for here, an unusually potent June heat wave. I stayed inside as much as I could yesterday, in the marvelous cool of the Lost Apartment. I slept well Friday night, which was great, and while I wasn’t feeling especially motivated yesterday morning, I did get my daily blog entry done as well as a Pride post. I read more of That Summer Night on Frenchmen Street, which is just absolutely charming (you should get a copy, Constant Reader), and then I did some more cleaning chores around the house before digging into the edits of this manuscript. I got the macro edit along with the copy edit, so I can get it all worked through, hopefully this weekend; I would love to be able to get this to the editor on Monday. We shall see how it goes. I did get some progress made yesterday; we’ll see how things go today. Yesterday was kind of nice, actually. I got some rest, too–today I feel really rested–and we finished watching Butchers of the Bayou, got caught up on The Crowded Room, and started watching City on Fire, which…is interesting, but I guess we’re supposed to believe Manhattan is an incredibly small town? It’s based on an “it” book from a couple of years ago that I never read; I had a copy but eventually donated it in one of my many purges. I’m not sure we’ll continue watching, to be honest; it’s okay but not riveting. There was no disappointment last night when I called the evening after a couple of episodes.
LSU won their game yesterday at the College World Series (GEAUX TIGERS!). We watched part of the game before switching over to The Crowded Room once I was sure the Tigers had the game under control. I have to say, it’s very fun living in Louisiana and being a sports fan. I of course always will root for any team based in Louisiana, with the Saints and LSU having my deepest loyalties, but part of the fun is how different Louisiana sports fans are from fans in other parts of the country. Tiger Stadium and the Superdome can get loud enough that it hurts your ears, but the thing I love the most about Louisiana sports fans is that they are also fans when it’s not easy, if that makes sense? It’s why Saints players become so attached to New Orleans; we’ll turn out to welcome them home from away games at the airport even when they lose. When the Saints were in the Super Bowl, the city of New Orleans decided to have a Saints parade that Tuesday night before the second weekend of Carnival, where they won or lost; a celebration if they won and a thank you for a great season and making it to the Super Bowl if they lost. Maybe the turn out for that parade might not have been quite the mob scene it was had they not won, but I like to think that it would have been pretty close to the same thing. I also love all the stories about how Omaha (which we’re calling Eauxmaha the way we always Louisiana-ize everything) loves our fans and hope we make it to the College World Series every year. There’s a bar in Omaha that has a shots contest for all the fans of the teams there–LSU is of course way out in front of second place, and at one point you could combine the other seven schools and LSU still won. It also reminds me of how when LSU played Oklahoma in the 2019 college football play-offs in Atlanta, a lot of the bars around the hotels and stadium ran out of beer and bourbon the first night (this was NOT a problem when LSU played in New Orleans for the national championship; New Orleans never runs out because we’re Louisiana too). I also imagine that the servers and bartenders must make a ton of money in tips from LSU fans, who are also as generous as they are friendly. (I was also thinking the other day as I rewatched highlights of this past year’s LSU-Alabama game, what a night for recruiting that must have been! As a high school football player, visiting Tiger Stadium on a night like that, when the entire stadium was rocking (the stadium’s reactions to the over time touchdown and the two point conversion both registered on the campus Richter machine), how could you not sign with LSU? I’m trying not to get overly optimistic for football season, but LSU and the Saints (and Tulane, even) are poised to have great seasons.
Fingers crossed!
It looks kind of hazy outside the windows this morning. The heat advisory/heat wave is supposed to last until Tuesday; I’ve not checked the weather yet this morning to see how bad today is going to be. AH, yes, heat advisory, partly cloudy, and the potential for a severe thunderstorm later this afternoon. I was hoping to barbecue today, so here’s hoping the thunderstorm either holds off until I do or is over before I want to. I’m not going to run errands until after work on Tuesday, on my way home from the office. We have plenty of stuff on hand to eat without me having to go to the store, and I’m not going to be getting a lot when I do make a grocery run because I will be out of the house all next week. The reason I am coming back on the following Saturday is so that I can do a grocery run before heading to work on Monday.
And on that note, I am heading into the spice mines. Have a lovely Sunday of your holiday weekend, Constant Reader, and I’ll be back before you know it.
And somehow, here we are at Thursday again. It is kind of annoying and irritating how quickly time is slipping through my fingers; but then this was a short work week because I was off on Monday. I’ve felt a bit out of sorts and off-balance this week, which I think is because of the Malice come-down plus knowing that I have to go to Alabama this weekend. It’s hard for me to focus and get settled with that journey ahead of me, and while I am not necessarily dreading it, I also know it’s going to be emotionally draining and exhausting so there’s some trepidation, to be sure. It’s also Mother’s Day the next weekend, so that’s going to probably be a bit rough (note to self: text your sister). Yay?
(Apologies, for some reason I can’t substitute text for links anymore. Fucking updates.)
Anyway, this anthology has my story “Solace in a Dying Hour” in it, and this is a story I am really proud of. It’s one where I went to rural Louisiana/bayou country yet again, which also meant navigating stereotypes, tropes, and clichés. I had originally intended to write a story about the grunch (a mythical creature sighted occasionally out in old New Orleans East, but I think his old stomping grounds now are neighborhoods) but in looking up information about that particular Louisiana legend I stumbled over a bunch more that I’d never heard of, and one in particular–le feu follet–really struck my fancy. These are fairy lights seen out in the swamp or along a bayou, kind of like a will-o’-the-wisp. Usually no larger than a candle flame, these lights have been said to be many things, but the definition I went with–the souls of the unshriven dead, come to claim other souls–worked for what I was trying to do, and the more I thought about it, the more the story began to come together in my mind. I think it’s a lovely piece of writing, frankly, and it really must be if I am going to say it publicly. It turned out exactly the way I wanted it to, and I had some expert editorial help from Katya de Becerra and Narrelle M. Harris (who worked with me on my Sherlock story; I really love working with Narrelle) that made it even better than I thought it could be while still remaining what I wanted the story to be; their input was invaluable. Good editors, y’all, are worth their weight in gold. As you can imagine, I am very excited about the story and the anthology.
I slept decently last night; I was again very tired when I got home. It took me an hour because of traffic–I stopped at the Rouses’s in the CBD on the way home, but was only there for fifteen minutes. I left the office at straight-up four thirty and got home after five thirty. It was the worst I’ve seen traffic in the CBD since before the pandemic. Not sure what there was about yesterday that brought horrendous pre-pandemic traffic back to New Orleans, but here we are, right? Heavy sigh. Tonight I am going to swing uptown on my way home to get the mail, so hopefully Claiborne traffic won’t be hellish tonight. And tomorrow is my work-at-homeday, before getting up Saturday and driving north. It was odd; yesterday morning on the way to work the traffic was also heavy. It’s been a hot minute, but I always used to drive here before the pandemic at off times so I never had to deal with traffic very much. I am beginning to think my working in the evenings is a thing of the past I may never see again, doomed to a life of getting up at six a.m. Monday thru Thursday for the rest of my working life. That sounds incredibly tiresome, doesn’t it? But I imagine I’ll be tired all of next week, too, and won’t get caught up on rest until the following weekend. Not loving this, for sure.
But in other weird developments, I discovered that Tuscaloosa–where I will be turning north to head to the home country–has WHATABURGER. It is almost sad how excited finding that out made me; I am definitely scheduling my trip to stop there for lunch on my way up. How cool is that? Usually when I drive north I tend to stop at Hardee’s, since we don’t have them in New Orleans and they’re basically Carl’s Jr, which I loved when I lived in California (and yes, I know the family that owns them is homophobic right-wing trash) so I always see that as a bit of a ‘treat’ for me when I go on long drives. I do love fast food hamburgers, although the old classics (McDonalds, Burger King, and Wendy’s) all are kind of disgusting to me now. Give me Whataburger, Five Guys, or Sonic. (I am starting to not like Hardee’s; the last few times it was just kind of meh)
Fascinating stuff, am I right?
What can I say? I’m a little bleary this morning, so maybe it’s best to head into the spice mines and be done with it. Talk to you tomorrow, Constant Reader!
Tuesday morning up before the sun blog in which yes, I have to go back to the office. It kind of feels like I’ve not been into the office in like forever, but it’s a new year for an old Gregalicious.
Yesterday was a wild day. I finished the book yesterday morning and turned it in (yay!) and then repaired to my easy chair to watch the LSU bowl game. The game was something, with LSU prevailing 63-7 over Purdue; LSU made Purdue look like a lower division team, and was up 35-0 at half-time, so it wasn’t terribly exciting to watch…but it was also airing at the same time as the Cotton Bowl, where Tulane was playing USC. I didn’t have very high hopes for Tulane, but I was paying attention to the score. As the LSU game wound down, USC was up 45-30 with less than five minutes left to go in the game, so I just kept watching the LSU post-game commentary and trophy presentation and finally switched over to see the end of the Tulane game, only to see there was like 20 seconds left in the game, Tulane had just moved the ball to a first down inside the ten yard line, and the score was now 45-39. They were reviewing the previous play for targeting, which was not called, and the game started again. There was a missed pass on first down, a caught pass rule incomplete on second down…which was reviewed and called a touchdown. Tulane then kicked the extra point to win, 46-45, in a massive upset for the ages and probably the biggest win in almost eighty years for their football program. ROLL WAVE! I still can’t believe Tulane beat a team that just barely missed the play-offs and could have played for the national title. And with the Saints also winning on Sunday over the Eagles, it was quite a weekend for football fans in southeastern Louisiana.
We gave up on Treason because we just weren’t all that interested in watching, and started Sherwood, a Britbox show, which seems interesting but we both kept falling asleep–tired, more than anything else–which I wasn’t entirely sure I was following, mainly because I kept dozing off. But it did look good, and it has a great cast, and so we’re going to stick with it for a while, at any rate. Today is also the day where my clinic job changes a bit; where we’re taking appointments every half hour (like pre-pandemic times) instead of every hour. I am not entirely sure how that is going to work, but today’s the day where we find out. Ah, yes, the joys of trial and error and finding the bugs and flaws in the system. I also have to catch up on my emails, which I let completely slide over the last four or five days while I finished writing the book. I have to say email, while incredibly convenient in many ways, has also sort of become the bane of my existence. I spend so much time on email, and sometimes email causes me great anxiety and stress. I’ve not had my inbox emptied in at least three years (!) and I am hoping that by the end of January that won’t be the case anymore. A goal for the new year is to keep my emails under control. We’ll see how that goes, won’t we?
I am not having any issues using “2023” as the date, but on the other hand I didn’t with “2022” until about October when all of a sudden “2022” didn’t look right.
But I am most pleased to have turned the book in. It still needs work, of course, but I need some time away from it so I can see it more clearly. I am also aware already of things that need to be done to make it better–the pacing in the first half is very off, the second half reads insanely fast–and there needs to be other tweaks and touches done for it. Taking January away from it is a good thing–by the time I start reading it again to edit the final edition in February I won’t remember most of it and that distance is sometimes absolutely necessary; it certainly helped with other manuscripts in the past few years. The deadline thing continues to be problematic and stressful for me; maybe the key is to go back to completing a first draft before asking for a contract in the future as I don’t ever want to be as stressed out as I was this past December, but right around Christmas the stress and anxiety snapped in my head and this weird calm descended on me. I didn’t even have to make myself work on the book these last few weeks, either; I just sat down and wrote three thousand words a pop (six over this last weekend) and before I knew it, there it was; finished.
And on that note I am heading into the spice mines. We’re having heavy weather today–rain, humidity, potential flooding and tornadoes–so going home this afternoon should be a really good time. Have a lovely third day of the new year, Constant Reader, and I will check back in with you tomorrow.
Oh, seriously, sometimes I wonder how I manage to still have a career. I did a list of great New Orleans crime novels–a place to get started, because there are a lot of them–for Crime Reads; you can click here to read it. It wasn’t easy narrowing it down to the few I selected, but I also wanted to be certain that the ones I chose were ones I absolutely, positively loved. (The one exception is Dinner at Antoine’s; I read that one as a teenager when I went through a Frances Parkinson Keyes phase–I the King is my absolute favorite) and of course, I didn’t mention James Lee Burke because really, does anyone really need to mention him when it comes to New Orleans and Louisiana crime novels? He’s the uncrowned king of Louisiana crime fiction, plus not picking him relieved me of the duty to figure out which book to choose. (Although I would have undoubtedly gone with The Tin Roof Blowdown, his post Katrina novel, which made me cry several times.)
After making groceries yesterday morning–yes, it’s always smart to go to the Rouses in the CBD on a Saints home-game day, seriously–I came home and relaxed a bit before digging back into the book. I didn’t get nearly as much done as I would have preferred; yesterday was one of those pulling hen’s teeth days. But the Saints managed to hang on to sweep Atlanta for the season, which is the highlight of their terrible season thus far (but we never lost to the Falcons this season), and then we finished watching Smiley (which is absolutely delightful) and then started Wednesday, which I’d been nervous about starting. I watched the original television version of The Addams Family, and Addams Family Values is one of my top three comedy movies of all time. I am still annoyed that Christina Ricci wasn’t nominated for an Oscar for either film; I’ve been a fan ever since and Wednesday, who didn’t really have much of a role on the original show, became my favorite character. I’d been putting it off, despite the great reviews, because I was worried I’d be disappointed. Constant Reader, I was not. Wednesday is terrific, and Jenna Ortega really nails the part. Catherine Zeta-Jones is fine as Morticia, but it’s hard to replace Anjelica Huston, who was sublime. We wound up bingeing almost the entire first season. Absolutely loving it.
It’s hard to believe this is it, the final countdown to Christmas. It’s this coming weekend, and while we still don’t have a refrigerator–out Christmas gift to ourselves this year–maybe we can get a great deal on one after Christmas. The ones with the freezer on the bottom are apparently all about an inch or two too tall to fit into the cubby where ours goes; it’s the damned unusable cabinets about it that are the problem. I don’t know if the cabinet needs to be torn out or if it can be raised a few inches and remounted on the wall; probably the easiest thing to do is just get the freezer-on-top size that fits and be done with it. It certainly would be the easiest thing to do, really. I just had my heart set on one with the freezer on the bottom–another disappointment I’ll need to learn to live with, apparently.
It’s cold again this morning, still sub-fifty degrees. The new heating system in the Lost Apartment works incredibly well–the only reason I even had the slightest clue that the it was cold outside was how cold the downstairs floor is beneath my socks. It’s supposed to freeze this weekend with a slight potential of snow–SNOW IN NEW ORLEANS (which I really need to write about sometime; the way the city reacts to snow always amuses me in a mean sort of way. Most people down here have no idea how to drive in snow or deal with it in any way, and why would they? It doesn’t snow enough for them to ever get used to driving in it. I don’t think it’s snowed here since before 2010? I don’t remember the last time it snowed here, but I remember the only really big snow we ever had; I just don’t remember what year it was. 2007? 2008? Something like that. But my goal for the holiday weekend is to get everything done that I need to get done on the way home from work on Thursday, so I don’t have to go outside for another four days in the cold. I’ll probably spend a lot of time working feverishly on finishing the book, of course, but will take Christmas day as a holiday from everything.
And on that note I am heading into the spice mines. Y’all have a great Monday, okay? I’ll be back in the dark tomorrow morning.
Queer and Loathing in America 