Tag: Louisiana

Jambalaya

Louisiana is beautiful.

The state’s nickname is “sportsmen’s paradise,” because all of the macho male outdoor sports–hunting, boating, fishing–are available here in abundance. We’re also called the Pelican State (most prevalent) and several other nicknames, not all of which are complimentary.

Louisiana has always been a conservative state, despite the existence of New Orleans. Originally French then Spanish before becoming American, Louisiana also was a part of the Confederacy and had an economy based on enslavement. We weren’t that far removed from David Duke’s gubernatorial bid (which came all too close to succeeding), and I remember Paul had gone on site visits with his boss at the Arts Council south of the city, and came home saying, completely in disbelief, that “people had yard signs saying ‘this is Duke country’–and me replying, sadly, “in the South they don’t bother to hide the racism–they see it as a positive.” But you cannot really go anywhere in Louisiana without being awed by the natural beauty on display here. I love Madisonville, and the Tchefuncte River area. It’s always a lovely drive to take 90 east when you head north (yes, I am aware I am saying you take an east-west highway to go north; welcome to New Orleans), and head out through the Venetian Isles area and drive along that narrow strip of land separating the lakes, crossing the Rigolets bridge and heading into Slidell.

A while ago, I was following a Twitter conversation about Burt Reynolds movies from the 1970s. Mind you, when I was living in Kansas our movie options were limited. There was a drive-in movie theater on the way from our little town Americus to the county seat of Emporia, and there was a small twin cinema on Commercial Street. The summer before my senior year Smokey and the Bandit opened on a Friday, and the following Friday Star Wars opened in the other theater. Both movies ran for about three months….so I saw them both repeatedly as there was very little else to do. The 1970’s were an interesting time for depictions of rural Southern sheriffs; Jackie Gleason hamming it up and going completely over the top. This was also the same time period that gave us corrupt politician Boss Hogg and the inept sheriff and deputies he controlled. These were always played for laughs, but the thing is–there really wasn’t anything funny about these types of characters in real life. Political and police corruption have always gone hand-in-hand in the Southern states; the police merely existing to enforce and enable the existing power structure. That Twitter conversation, along with reading Ethan Brown’s Murder on the Bayou and the various true crime documentaries about the Jeff Davis 8, put me in mind of writing about that kind of corruption. But I also kept wondering, but is this still true in the South? Do these kind of corrupt power structures still exist in the South? Would this read like a period piece?

And then the Murtaugh scandal broke.

Guess what? It IS still like this in the rural South. Thanks, Murtaughs!

I already had an idea for the next Scotty, and was pulling it all together, using a relatively minor political scandal here locally as the starting point for the story–which involved a conservative politician getting involved with a teenaged boy who worked at the food court at a mall, mostly buying him presents–clothes, underwear, swimsuits–and having the kid send him pictures wearing it. The age of consent in Louisiana is seventeen, and the kid was over seventeen, but while still being an icky thing, it wasn’t illegal–and they never did anything beyond that. It was mostly a harmless flirtation, until the kid, who was gay, realized that the nice man buying him gifts was actually a hardcore far right family values politician, so he went public. I still needed a murder, but I thought it would be simple to come up with one–the politician would have every reason in the world to kill to protect his secret, and he had his parish sheriff’s department to help commit and/or cover up the crime.

I did borrow two of the Murtaugh crimes for the book, but as starting points more than anything else, and came up with my own theories of said crimes for my own story–I wasn’t writing true crime, after all, and I wasn’t interested in proving the guilt of the Murtaughs. What I was interested in was exploring the decline and fall of a politically powerful family that had controlled a parish in Louisiana for well over a hundred years, almost like an absolute monarchy with primogeniture. I had also originally started the story with the kid coming to Scotty and Frank (through Scotty’s old buddy and former workout partner, David, who now teaches at NOCCA) because he gets a text from an unknown number which contains one of the pictures he has sent his older male friend (that he doesn’t know is a family values politician), and is worried about his own future if the information comes out. I wrote an entire draft of this story, but it didn’t work and I didn’t care for it…which was when it clicked into place: use two of the Murtaugh crimes to start with, and built it out from there. I decided that the kid at the mall wasn’t the original target of the politician, and that the original target was killed in a hit-and-run accident the year before; I also used the boat crash, turning it from a boat hitting a bridge to a pick-up truck hitting a bridge and pitching the passengers in the back into the bayou.

I also liked the teenager/older man dynamic, because it had played out with Taylor in the previous book–and Scotty had his own past with an older man when he was a teenager, which I was finally able to circle back around to.

I also invented the parish–surprisingly enough, there is no St. Jeanne d’Arc Parish in Louisiana–but it’s based loosely on what are known as the bayou and river parishes (Terrebone, Lafourche, St. Charles, St. John the Baptist). I already had a fictional parish on that side of the river (Redemption), but I decided Redemption wouldn’t work for this book, so I made it a neighboring parish.

Breakdown Dead Ahead

Wednesday and the middle of the week, with the weekend inching ever so much closer with every passing minute. The excitement never stops, does it?

The other day when I was reading I just put some music on Youtube on the television and let it auto-play. At one point when I was putting the book down to write down another bit of really strong writing (furniture being embarrassed) when I realized the song that was playing was “Silver Spring” by Fleetwood Mac, one of my favorite songs of theirs (definitely in the top five, if not the favorite) and while I’ve loved the song since first hearing it and have even seen the exorcism performance live for “The Dance” television concert when it originally aired, I’d never really thought about or analyzed the lyrics in any great detail or in depth–but had always known it was a bitter break-up song, never really grasping just how bitter of a break-up song it is; it’s not about heartache at all; it’s a really resigned, “I tried everything I could but nothing was ever enough” type of song…but on Sunday it hit me right between the eyes: it’s not a fuck you break up song, it’s a “Oh, but no–I said fuck you and I meant it” song.

Those lyrics are chilling, seriously.

Yesterday was another “feeling off” day; primarily because of Monday not being a normal day. We were also busy in the clinic, which I don’t mind–but I was very tired when I was finished with my shift yesterday and it was time to go home. I picked up the mail–I had ordered forever stamps for Christmas cards (feeling ambitious, like I am actually going to buy some, address them, and really send them this year), so those had came, along with my replacement Pyrex glass storage container lids and Elizabeth Hand’s Hokuloa Road (I’m really becoming a big fan) and some stuff for Paul came–but by the time I pulled up in front of the house I was worn down and tired and primed for some Tug lap time. The little guy slept in my lap for most of the night while I watched Youtube documentaries about the Byzantine Empire. I even wound up going to bed earlier than I usually do. I hope today feels a bit more normal; it kind of does already since I woke up this morning. And it’s midweek; and while I was sort of feeling sulky about having to do things in the evenings this weekend, it’ll be fine. This Friday I have no medical things going on–at least not so far–but I do have to run by the office for a benefits meeting, which is kind of important. Our insurance carrier is leaving Louisiana after this year, so they are presenting us with our new options this week…why do I have the sinking feeling that our insurance is about to get a lot worse?

It’s not like things ever really get better on that front, do they?

And now I am getting bills that are due in November. My God, how has this year already flown by so quickly? It’ll be 2024 before we know it…I mean, I am already thinking about Christmas cards, for fuck’s sake, and not letting the time escape before it’s too late to send them. I also kind of need to get them done before my surgery, too–I am going to be one-handed for a while, which is going to majorly suck for a while. I was thinking about this very thing yesterday, to be honest (and that could be why I was so tired and drained when I got home; it’s a lot when you think about it) and started paying attention to what I was using my hands for as I drove home and picked up the mail. The guys at the post office are amazing–they’ll carry stuff out to the car for me if I’m unable; I’ve seen them do it for other infirm people before, but how does one grocery shop? Carry in the groceries? I think I need to buy a wagon or something, an old lady cart or something, to make that easier for myself.

I didn’t start reading Angel’s Infested last night because I was mentally fatigued, but am hopeful that tonight I’ll get home from work and feel not only inspired to do some writing but to do some reading as well. I did read the first few pages, and it drew me right in–Angel Luis Colón is a very good and very underrated writer–but my mind simply couldn’t focus last night very much (hence watching new videos about the Byzantine Empire last night). I just hate feeling scattered, you know? And I feel scattered this week–partly because of the difficult and different days both Friday and Monday were, and trying to settle back into the routine gets harder and harder the older I get, which I am not terribly fond of. Oh, and yesterday wasn’t normal by any means, either–our nurse was out and a new program started yesterday so things were kind of frantic around the office with this weird manic energy that I also don’t like–the sameness of routine at the office is one of its primary saving graces, and when that feels unstable….well, there you go.

It was also cold yesterday–colder, at any rate–and even right now. it’s not even sixty degrees outside. It’s going to be into the eighties later on in the week during the day, but at night it’ll be in the sixties, which is always pleasant.

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

Little Jeannie

We have a new refrigerator, and it is marvelous in our eyes.

The delivery was actually two hours early and went incredibly smoothly. I did have to take the kitchen apart and rearrange a lot of things, which triggered the old your filing system is completely out of control and has been for quite time, and the duplicates, dear God, the duplicates. But having a new, working refrigerator (we really put up with the malfunctioning old one, which was never the same after whatever evacuation that was in 2008–Ike? Isaac? who knows. So, this kind of was the impetus for me to reorganize the cabinets, throw out a lot of stuff I didn’t even know I had (forcing me to recognize that I still have food hoarding issues), and do something constructive with the filing. This morning I am going to move the rest of the food over from the carriage house refrigerator, and make notes on what I need to get at the grocery store. My hope is to get that all done this morning, spend some time reading the Elizabeth Hand (which I am greatly enjoying), and then tackle the filing and get this under control once and for all.

And this is just a small step forward in a big journey I am taking–in which I need to organize and/or discard things I no longer need. I have more ideas than I will ever write about, or have the time to write; I get more ideas every fricking day. Do I really need to hold onto old file folders crammed full of ideas I don’t even remember that I have? And if I do remember it, and it turns into something–I will just create a new file rather than go look for the old. I should scan old contracts, shred tax returns, and who knows what kinds of treasures I may find in the files as they come together at long last? I’m still unsure of the system I am going to use, but I need to get all the things that are like each other together–files about Alabama, files about New Orleans and Louisiana, files about Kansas and California and Chicago and its suburbs and Houston and Florida and crime stories and all kinds of things; research versus actual fiction–book ideas v, short story ideas; fiction vs nonfiction–and so forth.

I also worked on the laundry room some, and also managed to watch a lot of football games–Alabama against Arkansas, Tennessee-Texas A&M, and finally Auburn-LSU. I still don’t know what to think about the conference race this year, other than both divisions go through Georgia and Alabama again this year, and I don’t see anyone beating Georgia during the regular season. Texas A&M’s loss at Tennessee is their second in conference and third overall; no division title or shot at the play-offs for them; yet they are a good team and can still play spoiler. Tennessee still has Alabama and Georgia and Kentucky. The West is pretty much still up for grabs, with Alabama in the catbird seat; still tied for first even if they somehow lose to LSU. I don’t know what happened to Auburn after the Georgia game–which they had a shot at winning–because that team didn’t show up in Tiger Stadium last night. LSU’s defense, which finally started playing at a higher level in the second half of last week’s Missouri game, looked really good…or was Auburn’s offense really that bad? I thought their defense was for real–but how good were they really, because they didn’t look like an elite SEC West defense last night. LSU does have an incredible offense, no mistake or question, but are they really forty-eight points on Auburn good? After Georgia escaped them with a 27-20 win on the plains? That’s why you play the games, people–anyone can win on any given Saturday.

I slept very well last night, which was awesome. I feel quite well rested this morning, and so today’s chores do not sound either ominous or terrible. The filing is indeed going to be a chore, as is moving the food back over and making two grocery runs, but better to get it all over with today, wouldn’t you think, so I can go home straight from work tomorrow? We’re having a “professional development day” that starts at City Park at ten in the morning, after which we go to Dillard for a presentation and then back to Ralph’s on the Park for another. Lunch and dinner are being provided, which means I am not going to be able to eat anything, most likely, which will be very unpleasant for me, I think, but I’ll deal with it. Tug is also settling in more–it’s very obvious that he knows he is home, and this is where he belongs. So bold, so curious, so playful, so adorable. He sleeps completely relaxed and sprawled out on whichever laps he chooses, and he’s started doing to Scooter thing where he’ll go back and forth between us for naps, which is adorable.

And he does love chasing the red dot.

He’s having particularly big kitten energy this morning, too.

And on that note, I am going to go start moving the food back over and making the grocery list. Have a lovely Sunday, Constant Reader, and I may be back later; if not, then tomorrow.

NOLier Than Thou

(NOTE: I started writing this post back in January, after I’d returned to New Orleans from my last Mystery Writers of America board meeting–this is to give context to the opening paragraph– as you are no doubt well aware, Constant Reader, that I’ve not been back to New York since January; so this is that same trip where this happened and I started thinking about these things, which have never been far out of the forefront of my mind since then.)

While I was in New York recently, walking around to and fro, here and there, hither and yon, I was always checking my phone (and yes, I hate that I’ve become one of those people) and then shoving it back into my pants pocket without putting it to sleep first or closing the app that was open. As I walked around, of course this led to my phone doing all kinds of weird things –closing an app and opening another, etc.; but at least there were no butt dials, right? At one point, when I pulled out my phone as I took a seat on the subway, somehow what was open on the screen was a google search for my book A Streetcar Named Murder–and when I went to close that screen I touched one of the images by mistake, which took me to the Goodreads page for the book. Bear in mind, I never look at Goodreads for any of my books, let alone Amazon–the temptations to start reading the bad reviews is too great, and while I can usually laugh them off, occasionally–and it depends entirely on my mood, of course–one will get under my skin and it will annoy me, and that’s not good for anyone.

This particular day on the subway the Goodreads page opened to the bad reviews first–its average is four stars, which I will always take because I am not Lauren Hough–and the very first one made me laugh out loud on the subway. Paraphrased, it was basically someone taking umbrage at “someone who doesn’t live here or know the first thing about New Orleans” writing a book about New Orleans. The reason they had come to this conclusion was because Valerie referred to Mardi Gras as “Fat Tuesday”, and according to this one-star reviewer, no one from New Orleans would ever say Fat Tuesday instead of Mardi Gras.

Well, I’ve lived here for twenty-seven years and I have heard any number of locals say Fat Tuesday rather than Mardi Gras, and so of course I had to click on the reviewer’s profile…and grinned to myself when I saw that they actually live in Metairie, not New Orleans…which to locals is a bigger crime than getting something wrong about New Orleans: claiming to be from New Orleans when you actually live in Metairie. (the rejoinder is usually along the lines of “bitch, you live in Metairie.”)

It was also kind of fun to be accused of inauthenticity when it comes to writing about New Orleans, because I personally have never claimed to be an expert on anything New Orleans (others have said that about me, and I always am very quick to reply not even close); the more I learn about the city the more I realize how little I actually know about the city. There’s an extremely rich (and often incredibly dark) history here; it’s hard for me to wrap my mind around the fact that the New Basin canal was there as long as it was, or that there were several train stations around the French Quarter (including one that essentially was in Storyville–rather convenient for the whores and pimps, right?), or that where UNO is now used to be the lake shore resort of Milneburg, or that the only way across the river or the lake was by ferry until Huey Long built a bridge at the Rigolets (the narrow inlet between lakes Pontchartrain and Borgne).

I was on a panel once at the Tennessee Williams Festival with Bill Loefhelm (if you’re not reading Bill’s books, shame on you and correct that immediately) and the question of New Orleans authenticity came up, and Bill’s response (paraphrasing) was that New Orleanians have a tendency to play a game called “NOLier than Thou,” in which they try to one-up each other to see who the true New Orleanian actually is–which is, of course, gatekeeping. (And yes, I immediately turned to him and said, “I like that and am going to steal it” SO CONSIDER IT STOLEN.)

It does bother me somewhat when I read books set in New Orleans written by people who have never lived here; you can tell, but I also get over it pretty quickly; who is to say who can and can’t write about a place? There’s a significant difference between visiting and living here, which I realized almost immediately after we moved here, and that also becomes very apparent in fiction. I had started writing the book that would become Murder in the Rue Dauphine before I moved here, and I realized, once I did live here, that everything I’d written about New Orleans was completely wrong. I didn’t work on the book for another two years; and even then I wasn’t entirely sure I’d lived here long enough to write about the city. So…I kind of cheated by making Chanse MacLeod not a native either; he’d moved to New Orleans after getting his degree in Criminology from LSU, and had been here about six or seven years when the story opened. So he was an outsider, too; so his views on the city and how things work around here were from an outsider’s perspective, like mine; that was easier. With Bourbon Street Blues, I decided that Scotty was not only a native but came from two old-line society families, from the Garden District and Uptown. One of the greatest joys of my publishing career was having the Times-Picayune’s mystery reviewer, as well as the Books Editor, both say repeatedly that I got New Orleans right in my books. (Thanks again as always for all of your support, Diana Pinckley and Susan Larson!)

And I never really worried about it too much from then on. I wrote about New Orleans as I saw it–the potholes, the cracked sidewalks, the leaning houses, flooding streets, oppressive weather and hurricanes. As the years passed, I became more and more aware that my New Orleans writing was primarily confined to the Quarter, the Marigny, the CBD, the Lower Garden District, the Garden District, and Uptown–a very narrow slice of the city, but those were also my slices of the city, so that’s I wrote about. Sometimes I’d venture into another neighborhood–Lakeview, the Irish Channel, English Turn–and sometimes the story would take the characters to another part of Louisiana–the bayou and river parishes, the Maurepas swamp, the Atchafalaya Swamp, Baton Rouge–which, oddly enough, I had no qualms about fictionalizing. I’ve created numerous fictional towns and parishes surrounding New Orleans; I’ve even invented a sleazy gay bar in the Quarter (the Brass Rail).

So, was I doing New Orleans (and Louisiana) right by making stuff up, inventing places like the Royal Aquitaine Hotel, the Brass Rail, Bodytech Health Club, Riverview Fitness, etc.? Sometimes you have to fictionalize things, even if they are based on something that really exists. I never really thought much about it; I felt like I was getting the feel of New Orleans right, that my characters talked the way people in New Orleans do and react the way people here do, and that I was putting enough reality into the books for them to ring true to locals, natives, and tourists. Sometimes the cases are based on, in or around something that actually happened or exist; like the Cabildo Fire, the Fire at the Upstairs Lounge, Hurricane Katrina and the ensuing flood; termite swarms; Huey Long’s deduct box; and even the court case in, I think, Murder in the Irish Channel that triggered the murders was actually based on a civil trial I served as a juror on.

When I started writing A Streetcar Named Murder, I realized a lot of things I was writing about had to be fictionalized; I couldn’t set a murder at a Mardi Gras krewe ball and use an actual krewe that exists in real life, for one thing (like I had to invent a French Quarter hotel for a couple of murders to occur in) and while I didn’t want to use the cheat that Valerie had moved here again, like I did with Chanse, I wanted her to be of New Orleans but not be of New Orleans…so her parents are from Georgia and moved here after college and marriage, so Valerie was born here, went to school here, met and fell in love with and married her husband here–but her roots aren’t very deep, so she is both insider and outsider at the same time. I liked that idea; like how I am of the South but not of the South, she was of New Orleans but not of New Orleans at the same time. When creating Jem Richard in Death Drop, again, he’s a recent transplant to the city but his father is from New Orleans but relocated to Dallas, where Jem was born and raised. Jem spent a lot of his summers in New Orleans when he was growing up with his paternal grandmother, so he too is of New Orleans but not of New Orleans; which I am really liking as a method of storytelling about the city. I also moved Jem to a different part of the city; he lives in the 7th ward, on St. Roch Avenue in what is known as the St. Roch neighborhood (aka what realtors are trying to redefine and rename as the “new Marigny”, in order to raise prices) which is also very close to my office. Part of this was to move the action out of the neighborhoods I usually write about (although he does wind up in both Uptown and the Quarter) and so I could explore another neighborhood/part of the city than what I usually write about.

I also had recently–prior to the pandemic–started feeling more disconnected from the city than I ever had before. Primarily I think this was due to my office moving; we had been on Frenchmen Street in the Marigny, one block from the Quarter and where Scotty lives, so whenever I needed some Scotty inspiration I could walk a block, stand under the balconies of his building and just look around, drinking in the sights and sounds and smells of the block. To get past this, I started joining New Orleans history pages on Facebook, like Ain’t Dere No Mo New Orleans or the HNOC page and various others–you do occasionally run into Confederate apologists and racists there (they usually cry about the “crime” in New Orleans–you know, the usual dog-whistles from the white flight racists who fled to Jefferson Parish or the North Shore to escape desegregation of the public schools) and reading more histories of the city, state, and region–which are incredibly fascinating. That reading/research helped me write my historical Sherlock in New Orleans short story, “The Affair of the Purloined Rentboy”–but I have also since realized I got some things wrong in the story too, but there is just so much to know. I set the story in 1916 for example….without knowing New Orleans was hit by a MAJOR hurricane in 1915 that wiped out any number of settlements and villages around the lakes and the bay shores (that will turn up in a story sometime; the destruction of the lake front village of Freniere is just begging to be fictionalized and written about). When I mentioned this to another writer, who primarily does historicals, she snorted. “It’s impossible to know everything, and would people in 1916 still be talking about a hurricane from 1915?”

Probably, but if it doesn’t have anything to do with the story being told, why would I mention it?

A very valuable lesson, to be sure.

So, yes, lady from Metairie: you caught me. I’m not from New Orleans, you’re correct. But I’ve also published over twenty novels and umpteen short stories set here, and have even won awards for doing it.

And I’ll call it Fat Tuesday if I fucking want to.

The Huey P. Long Bridge at sunset, photo credit Marco Rasi

Hold On To Now

Monday and back to the office with me today. Weekends are simply not long enough, ever, and should always be at least three days, methinks. Yesterday I witnessed the dreadful Saints performance, and it was not a good weekend for Louisiana football fans; the only glimmer of light locally was Tulane’s victory. I finished reading Shawn’s book, which was marvelous, and then picked out my first Halloween Horror read: Riley Sager’s Final Girls, and it’s long past time I’ve read this book. It’s rather embarrassing that I’ve not yet gotten to it. I also downloaded the audiobook of The Only Good Indians by Stephen Graham Jones for this weekend’s drive to the Redneck Riviera, and read another Alfred Hitchcock Presents short story, from Stories for Late at Night, “The Ash Tree” by M. R. James, which was delightfully creepy and reminded me of Daphne du Maurier’s “The Apple Tree”–and that in turn made me think about creepy trees as a trope in horror, and thought perhaps I should give the trope a whirl at some point. We watched the Scouts Honor: The Secret Files of the Boy Scouts documentary–which was just as creepy and awful and horrific as I thought it would be, as well as yet another pointed reminder of how straight people have failed to protect children since, oh like forever, and then cover it up as much as possible but then have the nerve to accuse queer people of pedophilia and grooming?

Sure, Jan.

We also watched the Jennifer Garner Apple Plus series The Last Thing He Said, which wasn’t great but wasn’t terrible, either; it just kind of evolved and wasn’t very thriller-ish or suspenseful. I also predicted one of the bigger plot twists in the first episode long before it played out in the show, but it was well done and an interesting story; but it wasn’t very thrilling or suspenseful; it never really seemed like there was any danger or stakes. It ws talked about a lot, but never part of the show’s reality? It was interesting enough to hold our interest–although I think I may have approached telling the story in a different manner than they did. It’s an interesting thought, at any rate.

It’s lovely having a kitten in the house, even if it means being more alert and having to get up more regularly because there was a crashing sound from somewhere else inside the apartment–usually followed by a galloping kitten moving at high speed away from the noise and mayhem he caused. He woke me up this morning by knocking my glasses off my nightstand table and then playfully batting them around on the floor, and once I took those away from him he went for the broom. He’s incredibly sweet, though, and I love that he’s so fearless and feels comfortable and at home enough to play. He slept on me for most of the Saints debacle yesterday, through the Boy Scout movie, and then moved back and forth between me and Paul during the Jennifer Garner show.

I also started writing the opening of a short story or a novel or something at any rate while watching the Boy Scouts documentary–part of it and the scandal was in New Orleans–and had an idea for the opening scene for something so I started writing it down; mainly about a college student away from home for the first time who’s obsessed with true crime and wants to be a true crime writer but isn’t sure how to get started chasing her dream other than majoring in Journalism at Liberty State in Liberty Center, Kansas–the town from #shedeservedit, why not reuse it? I don’t know why I started writing this when there are so many other things I should be working on. But that’s also life, you know, when you’re a writer–at least for me, there are always so many other ideas and thoughts and stories banging around in my head that it’s sometimes hard to focus on what I need to get done.

Heavy heaving sigh.

I never did make that to-do list for the week, so perhaps that should be the first thing on the list (I often do this so I can cross something off the list immediately; it’s satisfying and always seems to keep off working on getting the list completed). I also think that once I finish reading the Riley Sager I am going to reread a classic Stephen King that I’ve not revisited in a long time, The Dead Zone, which used to be one of my favorites and is still one that I think about a lot–especially during the rise of the former president, who eerily reminded me of the character of Greg Stillson, written thirty or forty years or so before the rise of the reality host/failed real estate mogul. (I’d considered rereading it in the wake of the 2016 election, but didn’t have the strength; I think now would be a good time.) I liked the opening of the Sager; which was encouraging. I hope to be able to get several books read this month…I think my reading is going to start picking up again, hallelujah. I think having a cat sleeping my lap while I read was what I was missing, and why it was hard for me to read since we lost Scooter. (I promise not to turn this into a Tug stan blog, seriously.) Today is going to be his first day left at home on his own for a while; we’ll see how he handles that.

And on that note, I am heading into the spice mines. Have a lovely Monday, Constant Reader; I’m sure I’ll be around again later on.

Story

Yesterday was a bit of an emotionally challenging one at work yesterday, but handling days like yesterday is the most important part of my job, and part of the primary reason I took the job in the first place. It does get to me sometimes; not as often as one might think, but that’s also having years of experience in doing the work, too. I was emotionally and mentally tired when I got off work, decided not to run any errands and just come home to have some time to myself for a little while instead. There were chores that needed doing, of course, so I put on my big boy pants and went to work. Chores are always lovely when you’re processing things, or when you’re writing something. I like how satisfying it feels to be doing something mindless with your hands while your mind works away at something.

I did manage to do some work on the sequel to Death Drop, and got about 1200 words down, so that’s something. It wasn’t as easy as the work was on Sunday, but I was also better rested then and hadn’t already worked a full day when I sat down to work on the first chapter of the new Valerie, too. Both manuscripts are starting to come together in my mind, which is nice–but I am not sure if this “work on one for a chapter and then switch to the other” is going to be productive or help me at all in getting them both done, either. And the chores helped me assess the chapter and come up with the things that need to be said and written in it, which I will do tonight. So yay for the chores again!

I’ve been toying with the idea for a blog entry for several years now that is actually turning into a longer-form essay. (It’s been sitting in my drafts for a very long time here.) It began as a response to a homophobic op/ed run in a college paper at a major Southern university that was so incredibly offensive on every possible level (there wasn’t a homophobic dog-whistle the little bigot writer didn’t blow) that it was hard to believe a college student in this day and age could write, unashamedly and with such great pleasure and glee, such incredibly bigoted rhetoric disguised as “concern” when what was actually written was nothing more than an uninformed, un-researched, and completely emotional rant, entirely based in nothing factual. All it did was merely give the author a chance to expose their anger and feelings of contempt for queer people. That person should never ever be given any kind of platform again under any fucking circumstance–unless she goes to work for the Murdochs. That post then continued growing, until it became something else entirely, eventually consuming another blog post draft I’d been toying with for a very long time about authenticity and #ownvoices and cultural appropriation. It’s a separate piece from the other essay I’ve been developing (“Are You Man Enough?” about masculinity)–apparently, I’m getting into the writing of essays now, even though no one will want to ever publish them–but it’s something I feel strongly about, especially with that recent nonsensical essay making the rounds about gay romance that erases gay writers almost completely. Yes, yes, we get it, you think straight women invented gay romance.

You can say it a million times, you can even believe it–but that still doesn’t make it true.

Erasure of queer people is an ongoing effort.

The water situation in New Orleans–always dire, no matter how you look at it really–is finally getting national attention (which means I’m hearing about it from friends and family), and this is a question/problem that is going to continue, and not just here, either. Florida seems just as determined to make a quick buck at every moment without any concern for their fresh water supply, which is being steadily poisoned by chemicals and other pollutants; I am sure the rise of the seas is going to also gradually impact the Florida aquifer, too, as well as those of cities along rivers on the coasts. Now imagine a major hurricane coming this way and sending a twenty-foot storm surge of saltwater up the river. It was never a concern before…but it is from now on. Yay! Obviously, Louisiana’s environmental issues are something I’ve always been concerned about, but the concern is definitely ratcheting up a lot lately. This brutally hot summer, the drought, the river level being so low for so long…it’s hard not to think about it. It should be our legislature’s primary concern…but they’re too busy legislating against trans people and banning books because, you know, priorities.

I also started watching, while waiting for Paul to come home from work last night, some old episodes of the original Dark Shadows, which I’ve been thinking about a lot lately. The funny thing about the show and my memories of it are that I don’t really remember a lot of the storylines or characters beyond the original; probably because the “Barnabas is a vampire” storyline was also made into a feature film (House of Dark Shadows) and when the series was rebooted in 1989, they started with that same storyline. Prime used to have the individual episodes; now they have them bunched together with titles–I was watching the episodes when Quentin (David Selby) first came on the show; the grouping is called The Haunting of Collinwood, which made it more fun because I don’t know how the storyline runs–although I know Quentin became one of the stars of the show so this evil persona he’s inhabiting here inevitably must be redeemed. I may have to rent House of Dark Shadows to watch again.

As you can see, I am starting to get into the Halloween Horror Month spirit already!

And on that note I am heading into the spice mines. Have a lovely Wednesday (oh! It’s Pay-the-Bills day!) and I’ll talk to you again later.

Padam Padam

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.

Green Light

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.

Adios Amigo

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.

How Can I Leave You Again

Tuesday and let’s restart this week, shall we?

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.

Here’s hoping today will be amazing.