Monday and back to the office with me today. Yesterday was nice and relaxing; I worked on writing for a while, didn’t do as many chores as I should have, and watched a couple of shows. I didn’t want to get out of bed again this morning–no surprise there–and am a little bummed to not have another day off as of yet. But I’ll survive, as I always do, which is no more than I should expect, one supposes. It’s hard to believe that it’s August and my birthday is looming, as is football season and Bouchercon is also coming to New Orleans the first week of next month. I’ve got a lot to get done in the month of August, and I really need to buckle down and apply my nose to said grindstone. It’s just tough when you have to battle fatigue and exhaustion all the time.
We watched the Netflix documentary series Amy Bradley Is Missing, which was interesting and terribly sad at the same time. I cannot imagine the pain of having a family member disappear without a trace the way Amy Bradley did off that cruise ship. As a disappearance of a family member is the crucial plot element of a book I am researching to write at some point in the future (The Summer of Lost Boys), watching this kind of counted as research for that, as it gave me insight as to how a working class family would react to such an occurrence and how the family would be permanently damaged….which also got me thinking about aftermaths to crime and horror stories. How do you go on with your life after fighting supernatural threats? Or after being a murder suspect? Or having someone close to you commit a serious and most heinous crime?
After dinner, we started watching a new Mexican erotic thriller series on Netflix, whose title translates to Unspeakable Sins. Like all Spanish-language erotic thriller series, there’s plenty of sex and nudity; we only watched three episodes (there’s two seasons of nine episodes each) but even trying to summarize the plot thus far–but the primary plot concerns Helena, a wealthy woman in a very controlling marriage to an older man, who starts having an affair with a very hot young escort, whom she convinces to flirt with her bisexual husband so they can get video of the two of them together and she can use the video as leverage to divorce him. Ivan pretends to be a journalist doing a story on Claudio, Claudio is attracted to him, but things go south–they fight and Ivan’s story is he ran away. But there’s blood all over the house and Claudio is now missing…can Ivan trust Helena or is she playing him for a fool, setting him up to take the fall for his murder?
That’s the primary story, but there are subplots as well that are just as intense.
Ivan is played by gorgeous Andres Baida. I mean…
Sexy Andres BaidaHe was also in Control Z and Who Killed Amy?
Gorgeous, just gorgeous.
I also spent some time processing seeing friends from high school that I hadn’t seen in almost fifty years. (The fact that it’s been almost fifty years since I graduated from high school also needs processing, but that will have to wait until I am done with this initial processing.) Every time I’ve had a conversation with someone from high school in the last thirty years–it’s not often and it’s not many–how they remember me, and high school, are vastly different from how I remember things, but they also never knew how miserable and unhappy I was. I always put on a good face; I always try to make the best out of every situation I find myself dealing with as they come up, especially when it’s not something you can change or alter in any meaningful way. As I’ve stated before, I’ve always thought I was odd-looking and never really had a fit body until I was in my thirties. But…seeing pictures from back then…I was wrong about how I looked (I’ve always been wrong about that, frankly) and my impact on other people. Both women remember me as having a really muscular fit body and being handsome and very kind and considerate and thoughtful–and funny; I’ve always been funny.
And I did work on writing yesterday. I edited another piece and wrote out what changes need to be made to it to make it stronger. I also did some laundry and a load of dishes, but didn’t pick up too much of the mess in the apartment. I do enjoy spending down time with Paul and Sparky, and really wish we were both retired and just hanging out around the apartment all day. Paul likes to be busy, though, so I do think he will take some adjusting if and when he finally does retire. I won’t be retiring for another few years yet; not going at 65, much as I would like to, so I have to get my shit together leading up to when I finally do.
After work today, I have to make groceries on the way home, and I’m hoping to do some writing tonight before we jump back into Unspeakable Sins.
So on that note, I am heading into the spice mines. Have a lovely Monday, Constant Reader, and I’ll be checking in with you again in the morning.
New Orleans is filled with bad streets–potholes and cracks and floods, oh my! I wrote about the pothole situation in A Streetcar Named Murder, which was a lot of fun to write. Helpful hint to people Not From Here but writing about New Orleans: if you want to sound authentic, mention the potholes. Every local and native reading it will nod appreciatively while smiling ruefully.
We very much bond complaining about potholes, and everyone in New Orleans has at least one pothole story–at least one. There’s The Pothole That Won’t Die on my street, for example, and of course, we can’t forget the time a pothole ate one of my tires. And actually, it was very strange that I never wrote about potholes before, in all of my books about New Orleans. But…I’ve also never written about New Orleans food and music, either.
I woke up this morning with my sinuses acting up and a headache, too–the same one I had all day yesterday. I really dislike this. I took a Claritin this morning and my nose is still running, which is annoying. I love the rain and thunder, but I hate what it does to my sinuses. I managed to sleep well, in spite of this condition, but it’s always miserable when I wake up and they (sinuses) are out of control like they were this morning. But…it’s been a hot minute since they’ve acted up the way they have been these past few weeks, so I am going to grit my teeth and get through this madness.
Last night I made groceries on my way home from the office, and worked once I got home. Alas, the sink is still full of dishes, but I was very pleased with the progress I made on my work last night. I edited and revised; am looking forward to another day of edits and revisions today as well. I am finally getting the voice right–although I think more edits and revisions are necessary as I shake out the plot–which feels very good; I am hopeful to get this entire thing ready to go by the weekend. We’ll be going to Costco and seeing Superman1this weekend, too, so I’ll probably be very tired by the time Monday rolls around, which is when I get the next infusion.
Hopefully, that won’t make me tired all week. As always, I have too much to do for me to spend the week recovering from fatigue induced by the infusion.
We also watched some more of We Were Liars, and really, the majority of characters on the show, particularly the adults, are terrible people, but it’s getting more and more interesting the deeper we get into the story. There are only two more episodes left, and we’ll probably finish it off tonight. I am coming straight home from the office tonight, so there’s no excuse for me not to do the dishes tonight. I did manage to empty the dishwasher at one point–while I was making my Gregalicious grilled cheese sandwich for dinner–and the refrigerator is organized, but there’s already other mess in the kitchen (didn’t take long, did it?). So tonight I have to do some laundry and at least clean out the kitchen sink; I don’t think there are enough dishes to warrant running the dishwasher quite yet.
Sigh.
And on that depressing note, I am heading into the spice mines. Have a lovely Tuesday, and I will most likely be back tomorrow morning.
Screenshot
And no, we still haven’t seen the new Jurassic movie. But Superman is my priority. ↩︎
Good morning and happy Saturday everywhere and to everyone! I slept really great last night, and had a pretty decent day overall for a work-at-home Friday. I got my work done, and then went to the doctor. I’m healthy; good blood pressure, heart rate, all of the vitals were perfectly fine. I was also proud of myself; I had done some of my own research into my insurance, found the answers we both needed to get a prescription of mine potentially approved, and had a nice visit with him. I really like him; he seems to be genuinely concerned about my health and welfare–always a plus to not feel like another person to check off the list for the day–and he’s very personable. I highly encourage those of you not happy with your medical care to find a new one. It makes all the difference in the world.
I need to remember to always advocate for myself, and doing all that research also made me feel like I was vested in my health. I highly recommend it. Ask questions. Get second opinions. And remember you might have other options. There’s no rule that says you can’t fire your doctor if you don’t think they are listening to you or taking you seriously; maybe if enough patients dump them they might wonder what they are doing wrong?
Things you realize when you’re in your sixties. Oy.
Sigh.
But today is going to be a lazy one around here. I have some chores to do, and I’d like to get some reading done. Maybe I’ll try writing, or editing, or something this afternoon. I don’t know, I guess we can see how everything goes. I did end up making a to-do list yesterday for the weekend, and I can slowly make my way down that list today (nothing on it requires writing or editing or revising) before making a new one for next week after the weekend is finished. I did write in my journal last night while we were watching the Olympics, and I can also do some more of that this weekend, too. I think I am going to read some more of Mary Oliver’s poetry; I ordered Jericho Brown’s Pulitzer Prize winning collection yesterday, too. I was thinking last night about how I’ve been marveling about my free time and how I should be making more of an attempt to utilize the free time; I think I may start trying to learn Italian again through Duolingo–but maybe instead I’ll try to get my German back? I mean, hidden deep within the recesses of my mind lies my memories of taking and learning it when I was a teenager. Paul and I have also talked about a German vacation; so being able to fumble my way through German interactions is better than not even trying.
I think the locals enjoy it when I try rather than not–in Mexico the phrase I speak all the time is “No hablo español soy un estúpido americano”. They always smile and laugh and are very kind and helpful.
I do feel good this morning.
I think I’m starting to get a handle back on my life again after dog-paddling for about eight years. I do worry sometimes, when that occurs to me, that it’s like post-Katrina, where I’d have a good couple of days and think it was all over, only to discover that it wasn’t. But I do think I am more clear-headed now than I have been, and I don’t feel like I have that gauze over my brain that makes me not see everything as clearly as I should. Sometimes I get into my head too much, and overthink things. That’s from the anxiety–and despite the change in medications, I still will do that from time to time before recognizing what is causing it–depression, PTSD, anxiety, whatever–but it’s also not as frequent as before and it’s so much milder than it used to be that I’ll happily take it and deal with it now. I am sure you are tired of me saying this, but this medication change has so dramatically improved my quality of life that I will say it again: you have to advocate for yourself with your doctor. Had I done this ten or twelve years ago–no regrets, Greg, no regrets. I am grateful we figured this out, and that’s the name of that tune.
And on that note, I am going to head into the spice mines. Have a lovely day, Constant Reader, and I will check in with you again later, no doubt.
The adorable British diving team, with out multi-Olympic medalist Tom Daley
Sunday morning and I slept late. I’ve been off both days this weekend, not really sure what that’s about…but this morning when I saw the clock and the time, I remembered that either yesterday or Friday, I was confused about taking my daily pills and I may have taken them twice…and a double dose for one day of my daytime anti-anxiety medication definitely would have led to exhaustion. Lesson learned. I am usually a lot more careful about these things, and so I need to better about paying attention.
I was sleepy for most of the day yesterday. I ran errands and came home, and then started working on things again, which was terrific. I had low energy, obviously, but I cleaned out the two remaining file boxes in the living room, thus clearing out the corner where the boxes stood, and which will now be taken up by the vacuum cleaner and the crate of Sparky toys, which opens up the living room still further. I started clearing books out of the laundry room and am on pace to get that shelf emptied and used for pantry items. This overhaul of the downstairs will obviously continue Thursday as I begin my four day weekend. I also managed to finish reading Horror Movie yesterday, which was sublime and wonderful, and started John Copenhaver’s Hall of Mirrors, between breaks so I could rest. I took a lot of those breaks, I might add–and during several of them I started to fall asleep. I did nap for about half an hour in the late afternoon, which is weird–and today I still feel a bit sleepy. All I need to do outside today is go to the gym and make a very quick grocery run, and then I get to come home and hopefully shower and get some writing done. Stranger things have happened, you know.
But the house is a mess and I am working very hard not to chastise myself for the way I left the apartment looking when i went to bed last night, barely able to stagger up the stairs. It won’t take long, really–the majority of the mess in the living room is the donation pile, which simply needs to be stacked properly and loaded into boxes. Likewise the kitchen won’t take long to look orderly again, either. There’s a lot of stuff to be put away for sure in the kitchen, and I’m not done with the laundry room, either–but it’s not a priority and can wait until the holiday weekend if necessary.
Sigh. I’m also very behind on my Pride Posts, which will defiantly continue to run through the Independence Day holiday weekend as I celebrate queer independence, and pray for our gains not to be lost to the current joke of a Supreme Court. I will never forgive anyone involved in “but her emails” or “benghazi” or anything else that smeared and slandered the most qualified candidate for president in decades so we could get fascism instead. Thanks, privileged white liberals for thinking she was corrupt or too shrill or not charismatic enough. And don’t think I won’t keep bringing that up until we’ve survived (if we survive) this election. We lost Roe v. Wade in no small part because that arrogant, narcissistic Hollywood she-bitch sneered on national television that she “don’t vote with (my) vagina.”
I hope to either spit in her skank face or piss on her grave before I die, and thank you again for making any number of films I enjoy unwatchable again because all I think about when I see her face or hear her voice is “we lost our rights because you’re an arrogant bitch who thinks she is a political expert when the truth is you don’t know jackshit and learned NOTHING from the 2000 election when you helped elected Bush.”
There’s a direct line from her performative progressivism to every justice who overturned Roe. I wish someone would bring up Nader to her in an interview. 2016 was a repeat performance of 2000. And for the record, she is not an ally. AOC is, and understands how to get things done and has evolved and learned how to work for progressive causes in Congress. She is an actual hero.
And my inability to write my Pride Post about The Rocky Horror Picture Show is because I don’t want to mention her or use any of her images, which is difficult.
Hurricane Beryl apparently is now a Category 3, with the potential for becoming a 4 once it enters the Caribbean, which is rather early maybe for a storm this size, which doesn’t bode well when we’re kicking off the season and the B storm will come ashore as a 4. It looks like the most likely path means a Yucatan landfall before crossing the Gulf again to come ashore close to the Mexico/Texas border. There are also two other potential storms out there, one in the Gulf (what if Beryl consumes this one? YIKES) and one out in the Atlantic. I guess I need to start looking into hurricane supplies and get the house stocked up again.
Okay, that’s NOT helping, so I think I should head into the spice mines for now. I am going to eat something and start working on this mess while writing another entry. I may also be back later, since one never knows what I will be doing at any given time.
Well, we survived Monday, and it was in doubt there for a moment. I had some serious trouble getting motivated yesterday morning in order to leave the house for work, but I did eventually get out and on my way to work, and I had a pretty decent day there, too. It rained almost all day; it was hot and humid in the morning when I left for the office, but by mid-morning the city was being soaked by an almost constant stream of clouds throughout the day. Sigh. All I wanted to do was go back home and get under my blankets, but no such luck on that score, alas.
The most exciting news is yes, I did start writing my new book yesterday. Clocked in three thousand words on Chapter One, and it all flowed really easily. Granted, this project has been in my head for years–I think I wrote the first draft of the novella somewhere in the last ten years or so–but I am excited. I’ve been working on it for about a week now, doing the structural work behind the scenes of the story while also chopping up what was in the novella back into chapters. I am very excited to be working on this book for any number of reasons (not the least of which being that I’ve not worked on a book in a very long time) and it’s a departure from my usual. Sure, there’s crimes and stuff and New Orleans sweltering in a very hot summer, but it’s more ambitious of a story than I’ve tried in a while and I also am going to use dance songs as chapter titles, which is kind of cool. I am pleased with the work I’ve gotten done yesterday, and the direction the book is shaping up to take. It’s so lovely to be excited about writing again, you know?
I slept well last night–it rained all night, which meant the air was cool and damp and it felt amazing under my blankets. I am waking up now, which is nice–I feel very rested, even if my lower back is still a bit tight and sore–and my coffee is going down smoothly. It’s weird to have tomorrow off, and it’s even weirder that today is Pay-the-Bills Day, since tomorrow is a holiday. Such a weird week this is turning out to be on that score. And in a few weeks, I believe the 4th is a Thursday, so I might take that Friday off as well.
We did watch House of the Dragon last night, which was fun. I like how they’ve changed the opening credits to not be so similar to Game of Thrones, separating the show from the original but still connected. I don’t love this show the way we did the original, but it’s entertaining enough, and of course, dragons. I also suppose it’s not quite as compelling because we know the Targaryens eventually lose the Iron Throne and this civil war was the beginning of their end, and the end of the dragons until Danaerys.
Tonight after work I have to run some errands: a quick grocery run and a stop at the post office. I am planning on writing tonight–I really am excited about the this book, and it’s nice to be excited to be working again, you have no idea–and I also need to figure out some more pride posts. I’ve drafted a few ideas here, but am not really certain if some of the ideas I have are worth pursuing, so I need to think about them some more. It would also be nice to do some reading tonight after writing, too. (Tomorrow I will read, write, clean and go to the gym.) I’m actually looking forward to this day off, you know? Very strange and peculiar, but this week was going to be weird and feel off anyway, and a trip to Florida over the weekend. I checked the weather and it’s going to be rainy and overcast the entire weekend over there, but sunny and hot in New Orleans. Go figure. I should also probably check the tropical weather tracker; yesterday the system in the Bay of Campeche was moved from possible to potential cyclone status, and check the path as well. It was predicted for east Texas coast/Mexico yesterday….and that’s what it’s going to do. There’s one off the coast of Florida heading towards land, but it has very low chances of developing into anything before landfall. Christ, it’s so early in the season already to be worrying about storm tracks and so forth, and I hate the entire idea of evacuating again. Heavy sigh.
And I took a moment to check my email, and there was one from Dad, cancelling this weekend because my aunt is having some health issues. Ah, well, I’ll keep Monday off and treat myself to a nice three day weekend.
Which is a good time to bring this to a close. Happy Juneteenth Eve, everyone, and I’ll probably be later.
Well, here we are on Monday morning after my surgery, and I’m not really sure what I’ll be doing today. I really need to pick up a prescription in Uptown, and we need to pick up the mail at some point, but I’m not really sure how I’m going to do that. I don’t know that I should risk driving yet, because New Orleans drivers are so horrible, but it has to be done and I need the prescription. I suppose I could take a ride service, but I hate spending the money as well. I guess I don’t have a choice though, so I’ll deal with that later. I also need to make groceries.
We had had an issue a few weeks ago with the apartment. They were doing some work on the patio deck above my kitchen, and unfortunately there was rotten wood up there. The ceiling kind of gave way; they ended up nailing up a piece of plywood over the hole in the ceiling. Unfortunately the next time it rained, of course, it leaked , but they finished the work up there and never came back to repair our ceiling. We had a massive thunderstorm Saturday night, and so i woke up Sunday morning to water on the floor in the kitchen, on the stove, and on the counter. The carpets in the kitchen were also wet; so I got out towels and a bucket for the dripping and hoped that the ceiling wouldn’t cave in. About two hours later, yeah, some of the plaster came down with a loud, startling crash, and so now there’s another hole in the ceiling. The insulation up there is soaked, so I had to leave the bucket for the dripping to continue. Needless to say, this is a really shitty time for this to happen and it spiraled me into a really bad depressive state yesterday. I have noted already that my emotions have been all over the place since the surgery — so something like this really sent me into a spiral. The anxiety really ramps up, so yeah, yesterday was just not a good day for me.
So, I repaired my easy chair with a Gatorade and Nurse Sparky and put on one of my comfort movies, Indiana Jones and The Last Crusade. I’ve always loved Indiana Jones, but I haven’t seen the most recent movie yet. I’ve always wanted to write an Indiana Jones type book; I love historical treasure hunts and have always thought that it would be fun to write those kind of stories with Colin as the main character — away from Frank and Scotty, to kind of fill in the blanks when he’s away from New Orleans. I have an idea that’s tied into the 4th crusade and the sack of Constantinople; a treasure hidden away in the Hagia Sophia since the Nicaean Council that established the dogma of Catholic Christianity. The Orthodox patriarchy had been keeping this treasure secret from the Pope and the Vatican for centuries, at least since the schism of 1052. My idea is that the Venetians and the Crusaders knew that the Pope would be furious to learn they had sacked Constantinople, but the Doge, Enrico Dandalo, not only knew about the secret but also knew presenting it to the Pope would get them forgiven. The primary problem with this is that I have never figured out what precisely was hidden in the Hagia Sophia; but I wanted to tie it into the Assassins and the Old Man of the Mountain. I thought that would make for a fun adventure, particularly setting it in a fictional Middle Eastern country. However, with everything that’s going on in the world nowadays, writing about the Middle East is probably not a good idea at this point.
I also read a lot of short stories over the weekend. I read all the stories in one of my Alfred Hitchcock Presents anthologies, Stories That Scared Even Me, and that was a lot of fun. The book was published originally in the 1960s or early 1970s and it is amazing how much attitudes in society and cultural attitudes have changed since that time. The contributors were almost entirely male — all of these anthologies are underrepresented with women — and there are a lot of really racist and patriarchal tropes in some of the stories. Several, for example, are set in Mexico; I’ll let your imagination do the rest rather than quote what they said so casually. I’m also writing a story set in Central America — I was writing it to submit to a horror anthology — and it was one that I had started writing back in the 1990s, I believe. I was kind of horrified by what I wrote — I feel like by the 1980s I should have known better about these kinds of tropes — but the story is salvageable; with some strong changes and a fictional country. But you can still get into trouble, even with that, and the last thing I ever want to do is write something problematic that will offend people. (I have already mentioned the story that I submitted to a anthology that’s not going to happen now about the South, which I recently reread and was horrified by.) A lot of these stories have those twisty type of endings that I always loved; that little hint of irony that really made the story sing. I always try to give my stories those kinds of endings because that’s what I grew up reading as far as short stories are concerned, and I often have to struggle to not try that with every story, because it’s not right for every story and I have a bad tendency to try to force things to work the way I want them to, instead of the way that they should work organically.
Dictating is much slower than typing, as I’ve noted before; this is taking me a lot longer to dictate then I would like. Where I actually typing this entry, I would probably already be finished by now. But you do what you have to do. I also started dictating my next book, figuring it’s better to get started on it while I’m at home recovering from the surgery, rather than waiting until such time as my left hand can be used for the keyboard. I’m still not having any pain — my primary issue is mobility, not being able to use my left hand for much, occasional nausea from the antibiotic, and the mood swings and depression. I wish I had already started on my anti-anxiety medication protocol before the surgery, but what can you do? Yesterday morning, I was thinking that I made a lot of bad decisions about this surgery and that I didn’t do it knowing everything that would result from it; but I was worried about not ever being able to go to the gym and workout again unless and until this was done, and pushing it back to next year wouldn’t have changed any of these issues, I don’t think, other than possibly better planning on my part. But that’s also part of the anxiety—I always question my decisions, and never really believe that I made the right choices afterward. I guess it is just a part of that hindsight being 20/20 thing that always drives me crazy. I never really am confident in the decisions I make, so I always try to not second-guess or doubt myself afterward; there’s no point in rehashing things that you can’t change. Why obsess over something I have no control over anymore? That’s the easiest way to drive yourself crazy, I think.
We’re also really enjoying the show Bodies on Netflix. It has everything that I like; a bit of science fiction, crime, surprise twists, and gay content. You can never go wrong with me when you have gay content. (That’s not entirely true; there are some really terrible shows in movies with gay content that are basically unwatchable) I also finished watching a Jane Seymour series on Acorn called HarryWild, which wasn’t great but was entertaining enough. I don’t know what all I’ve been watching to be honest with you, Constant Reader, but I’ve been watching an awful lot of television.
I did watch a terrible adaptation of Agatha Christie’s The Mirror Crack’d, and the less said about that the better.
I’m hoping today or tomorrow to be able to read a novel; I’m really enjoying the one that I was reading before the surgery and would like to finish it, but my mind is all over the place and has been since coming home from the surgery. I haven’t even been able to focus on the TV I’ve been watching as much as I would like. Part of it is the depression, part of it is the holiday without Mom, and of course, the surgery. You see how I am? I’m being hard on myself after a major surgery for not getting anything done or being productive. Heavy sigh. Welcome to the wonderful world of what goes on inside my head.
And on that note, I am going to bring this to a close and see if I can figure out what I’m going to do for the rest of the day, and what I can do about these errands. I hope you have a lovely Monday and as always, thank you for checking in and thank you for reading.
I will spare you, Constant Reader, the trials and tribulations of my medical travails; I have to see another specialist, and we’ll leave it at that for now.
I also had to research whether either of these specialists he referred me to actually take my insurance (they do) and then get to hope they can see me at some point before this gets even worse and more difficult to take care of. I spent the rest of the day cleaning and trying to put this bullshit out of my head, because all it did was make me angry all over again and, unless I am putting that anger to productive use, it’s just wasted energy. But I’m glad I’m making progress on this at any rate, and I suspect that a doctor will be the murder victim in a book I will write at some point in the next few years. I also made an appointment on Sunday to get the hearing aids process moving along–it would be so great if I could get them before the trip, wouldn’t it?–and so at least soon I’ll be able to hear again, and in about a month I’ll be able to chew again. Yay!
Always look at the positive. Life doesn’t give you anything you can’t handle; it’s how you handle it that matters.
I took a shower to wash the blech of the day off me–it’s amazing to me how that always seems to work and put me into a better mood. The symbolism of washing the negativity off of me is actually effective and works to somehow reset my brain. I also had a great mail day–picking up the mail on the way home and made groceries, too–in which I got the ARC of the new Margot Douaihy Sister Holiday crime novel (her debut, Scorched Grace, is fantastic) and Duane Swierczynski’s short story collection Lush and Other Tales of Boozy Mayhem, which I am looking forward to digging into. Paul got home rather late last night, but we did have time to watch an episode of Turn of the Tide–but I think I actually have lost the thread of the plot. But it’s entertaining enough, still. I do want to start watching Ahsoka on Disney–I’ll try anything Star Wars; so far Boba Fett is the only Star Wars series we didn’t finish.
I’m still behind on talking about the Alfred Hitchcock Presents stories I’ve read lately; but yesterday at the specialist’s office I started reading Brett Halliday’s story “Pieces of Silver” from Stories to Be Read Late at Night, and it was an interesting tale, if dated, and more than a little bit guilty of racism. I’d not read Halliday before, but I’ve heard of him; I remember seeing his Mike Shayne novels on the wire racks at Zayre’s when I was a kid, and i have one of his books Hard Case Crime reprinted, but haven’t read yet. It’s a very typical tale of its time, though–complete with the colonialist mentality toward the indigenous people of Latin America. The story is set in Mexico, and is about an ugly American-type who has come to the region looking for oil. I will say the ugly American is the villain of the story and every step of the way Halliday is very quick to point out the classism, racism, and toxic masculinity of Thurston, the American–the way he treats the locals he hires to take him up river into the jungle; the way he ogles and wants the teenaged daughter of an American expatriate who married a local girl–but while there is absolutely no question that Thurston wound up getting exactly what he deserved…it’s very hard to be sympathetic to the author’s view of Mexico as a still wild, exotic and extremely primitive place; he certainly doesn’t view the Mexican working class with the same respect as Katherine Anne Porter. (On the other hand, I’ve always been bored by Porter’s Mexico stories–because even in them there’s still an element of the privileged white woman viewing the plight of the poor Mexican working class from her lofty perch at a safe distance.)
Reading this story only served to further emphasize to me how tricky this short story from the past that I am currently trying to revise and finish will be. Originally set in the Yucatan (I wrote it after I visited the Mayan ruins there), it was one of those Alfred Hitchcock Presents/ Tales from the Crypt kind of stories, but in reviewing the story as I wrote it, I fell into the trap Halliday did with his story–making the native people exotic and othered; mysterious and primitive. I am sure there are still poor people living in remote places in Mexico, but this isn’t the way to write about them. I’d been thinking of moving the setting of my story from Latin America (in this revision, I created a fictional country) to the Aegean–like there aren’t plenty of Greek myths to build the story around, make it seem real, and of course I can create a mysterious remote Greek island no one ever visits and no one would blink twice. I just haven’t been there myself, but I need to snap out of the mentality that I can only write about places I’ve been. It does help, of course, but…when you’re creating a fictional place, you’ve never been there. No one has.
And on that note, I am heading into the spice mines. Have a lovely Thursday, Constant Reader, and I will check in with you again tomorrow.
Sunday morning and all is well in the Lost Apartment. Yesterday was kind of nice. I slept well again on Friday night, woke up at five, six and seven like every morning with no alarm, and then finally got up around seven thirty to get ready for the day, which was nice. I decided that it made the most sense to run my errands in the morning before the brutal heat of the afternoon; I needed to mail a letter and pick up the mail, as well as drop off Scooter’s leftover food at the Cat Practice and make groceries–and I needed cleaning supplies, so that was crucial to the day; an errand that had to be run. It was brutally hot, but I managed it all. I bought a lot of cleaning supplies, and spent most of the afternoon yesterday cleaning. I did the stairs, the floors in the bedroom, and finally emptied and cleaned out Scooter’s litter box. I was avoiding it because I was afraid doing it would make me sad, but ironically it was just a chore…but writing about it just now made me start to tear up a bit. Sigh. He was such a dear cat. (I also looked at the adoptable cats on the SPCA’s website. I really really want to get this twelve year old ginger boy that no one’s going to want because he’s old..but we’re old. Is it fair to get a baby cat that might outlive either or both of us? Well, that certainly cheered me up a bit. Christ.)
I also did the baseboards and the CD stand…which is something we’re going to have to discuss. We don’t even have a CD player anymore, and yes, it’s terrible to have paid for all that music only to lose it now all these years later but…I haven’t listened to a CD in years. My car has a CD player–maybe I can move some into the car and listen to them instead of the phone? We have all these great gay deejay dance mix CD’s–we used to buy them all the time, the little store across from the Pub used to sell them, and Tower Records–when it existed still–also sold dance remix CDs; I think I got the Debbie Harry dance mix CD single for “I Want That Man” at Tower Records. Anyway, years and years ago Paul had this wooden CD stand custom built. It’s a lovely piece of furniture, and perhaps it can be repurposed for something else–but the CDs are grimy and I cleaned them with a lick and a promise; but…do we really need to hold on to all those CDs? (The stand needs to be repainted white, too–years of nicotine have turned it precancerous–but that will have to wait until the weather calms the fuck down.
But I feel good about the apartment, really. Having the walls finally finished has awakened a nesting instinct in me that’s been dormant for quite some time. As I was finishing the stairs and looking around, I actually thought I wouldn’t mind having someone come by the house now even though it’s still not up to my standard (my work space will never stay tamed, alas), which is something I’ve not even considered in years. It felt good wiping down the walls and baseboards, picking up all that nasty dust and getting rid of it. I also bought a dust mop at the store yesterday (as one of my cleaning purchases) so I can run it over the walls more regularly to keep the dust from accumulating and turning into grime or cobwebs. It’s still very much a work in progress, of course, but I am feeling good about the homestead, and probably am about to do another brutal purge of the books.
I read some short stories yesterday as well–more of the Alfred Hitchcock Presents anthology stories, of course–and I am getting such an education in short stories, as well as having some powerful insights (well, to me anyway; remember, I go through life completely oblivious to everything) about my own stories, what I find myself afraid to do and how limiting my own fears about my abilities and my talents and my creativity have proven to be. One of the stories I read yesterday, “Getting Rid of George” by Robert Arthur, was about a movie star whose carefully hidden past suddenly comes back with a vengeance just as she is about to marry the love of her life and start her own production company with him, making herself quite rich in the process, and it hit me: one of the stories I am struggling with writing right now is about a wealthy gay man and his boy toy looking for a fabled ‘fountain of youth’ in a fictional Latin American country. I’ve had the idea for decades–since visiting the Mayan ruins in the Yucatan and thinking I should write a story about these ruins (and yes, well aware that I have to be incredibly careful and respectful of the Mayan culture and their descendants)…and this is the story set in a foreign locale I was going to try to write for the Malice anthology. I need to recognize self-destructive thinking when it presents myself; and whenever I think you can’t write this for whatever reason my reaction shouldn’t be to shy away from it but to dive into it headfirst and commit to it. (This is also one of those stories that I thought I had already written a draft of; but it is not to be found anywhere, nothing other than pieces of aborted openings–it may have been lost in the Great Data Disaster of 2018….but I just realized where it probably was and THAT’S WHERE IT WAS! Victory!)
And really, one of the two main characters in my story “Don’t Look Down” was a retired former boy band star. So, that was certainly outside my expertise, was it not?
I really enjoyed the Robert Arthur story; Arthur was also the creator of, and wrote, eleven of the first twelve Three Investigators mystery series, which makes him always special to me. He worked for Hitchcock on the literary side of the brand (Hitchcock became a brand like before we thought of creatives in terms of brands and branding and brand marketing), and also “helped” (i.e. “ghost edited”) most of the Alfred Hitchcock Presents anthologies. Arthur was a great writer, “Getting Rid of George” certainly is evidence of his talents, and it’s a shame he isn’t better known or regarded; but the great tragedy of juvenile books is that they rarely survive the test of time–they inevitably are forgotten, as are their authors, unless they win a Newbery medal or something, like Johnny Tremain, but I suspect even that tired old war horse of American revolutionary propaganda isn’t read nearly as much today as it was when I was a kid. There are few–Lois Duncan being one–crime writers for juveniles or young adults to be named Grand Masters by Mystery Writers of America; Arthur certainly deserved to at least be considered, as the creator of the Three Investigators and as a rather successful writer of crime short stories.
I read another story in My Favorites in Suspense, “Island of Fear” by William Sambrot, which I really enjoyed and thought was quite excellent. An Englishman looking for antiques and local art in the Greek islands spots a small island with a massive wall built along its shoreline, and wants to stop there as it is remote and doesn’t, per the captain, get many outside visitors. This is a “be careful what you wish for” tale; because he convinces the captain to let him off on the island, where he spots a gorgeous sculpture through a break in the wall, so exquisite he has to have it and meet whoever the people are who live in the land inside the wall. The island natives are quiet and don’t talk much–not his usual experience with Greeks–and finally convinces a young man to row him around the island to an opening in the walls so he can go ashore, meet the owners, and buy the statue. As I said, it’s a “be careful what you wish for” story, and the ending is quite satisfying as the last few paragraphs make sense of the “mystery” of the island. It may well have been my favorite of the stories thus far in the anthology (at least of the new-to-me material; remember the book opened with “The Birds” by Daphne du Maurier, which quite set the tone for the rest of the stories.
I also read a story from Stories That Scared Even Me, “Two Spinsters”, which falls into the category of “the unfortunate traveler,” which several stories in both anthologies fall into. It’s not bad, the main character being a police detective who gets lost on unknown backroads and can’t find the town he’s looking for, and is eventually forced to seek refuge at a strange house with two identical, if silent, spinsters–and there’s a lot more going on in that strange house than the weary traveler suspects at first. This story was written by E. Phillips Oppenheim, yet another writer I’ve never heard of or his work before. Oppenheim, however, was quite the big deal in his time; he wrote and published over a hundred novels and even more short stories; John Buchan (a Golden Age crime writer not as well known today as perhaps he should be) called him his primary inspiration when launching his own career in 1913.
Interestingly enough, the next story up in Stories That Scared Even Me is by Robert Arthur. There are only three stories left in My Favorites in Suspense, and the book closes with a short novel, The Blank Wall by Elisabeth Sanxay Holding, a classic from that post-war era that I’ve always wanted to read (it was common in those days to close a short story collection by including a short novel, and most crime novels in those days were rather short). I’ll probably finish reading those short stories today, but really need to get back to reading novels–maybe I’ll read a bit more into The Hunt by Kelly J. Ford, which is fantastic; taking so long to finish should not be seen as an indictment of Ford’s work. The book is fantastic and she is one of the great new voices in queer crime fiction–and I’ll be doing a crime panel with her later today for Outwrite DC.
I slept really well last night–it’s lovely having Paul home, really–and so today I hope to get some reading and writing done. I am about to adjourn to my chair to finish this Hitchcock anthology, and then I am going to work on getting some writing done while cleaning up the kitchen and my workspace. I feel very well rested this morning–I could have easily slept much later–so hopefully it will be a great day of getting things done.
Or not. Since Paul’s home now we can finish watching Gotham Knights, Hijack, and back to other shows we’re watching, and of course Paul needs to watch Season Two of Heartstopper, which means I can finally talk about it. I may check in with you again later, Constant Reader, and if not, I certainly will do so tomorrow.
Well, I jinxed myself by saying yesterday–either here or to someone at the office–that I hadn’t had insomnia for a long time. So, of course last night it returned with a vengeance. I stayed in bed, of course, drifting in and out of mild, light sleep most of the night, which wasn’t very much fun. I feel rested this morning, but I also felt rested yesterday and was really tired by the time the afternoon rolled around. I did get a lot of work done, too, which was super-great. I wrote a chapter of the book (a terrible one, but a chapter was written nonetheless) so progress was made–and the story is beginning to coalesce inside my head right now, which is also a very good thing. I am thinking I can get this draft finished by the end of the month and then spend November cleaning it the fuck up.
We continued watching A Friend of the Family last night, and yikes, what a situation this family found itself in. It’s very easy to judge them with the hindsight of the twenty-first century behind our reasoning, but the 1970’s were a vastly different time. In a small city like Pocatello and in a small community like the Mormon Church of the area–you’d never think you’d meet a sociopath in that environment, nor would you think about perverts or pedophilia or sociopathy in someone you’d met that way. And you never want to believe that your child was molested; so naturally in that time you would seize on any excuse to say that wasn’t the case. We only have one episode left, so I am curious to see how it all turns out. I don’t think they ever got any justice (which seems to be a rare thing indeed), and the fact that the man claimed he had the parents’ permission to take the girl to Mexico–where he married her, bigamously–even though the parents said it was a lie and the police basically took his side, is mind-boggling to me. (An adult can no longer take a minor out of the country without documentation, usually notarized, from the parents. A single parent taking a minor out of the country has to have documentation stating that the other parent is aware and grants permission; this was drilled into us at the airline…)
I also cannot imagine the guilt the parents lived with for the rest of their lives, either. Yet another reason I am glad to not be a parent, seriously. Never had any desire, and don’t miss it in the least.
It rained overnight, apparently, which could explain the insomnia; barometric pressure changes, particularly dramatic ones, can affect my sinuses and thus my sleep. My sinuses feel fine, but I also took a Claritin yesterday so that could be the answer. It’s feeling very muggy this morning, which is okay as our office is always super-cold in one area while temperate in another. I may wear a sweatshirt under my work T-shirt. (Is this stuff as fascinating to you as it is to me?)
Probably, since I’m boring myself I can’t imagine that I am fascinating or interesting you, Constant Reader.
I have errands to run on my way home. I am getting antsy, because I am expecting the finished box o’books for A Streetcar Named Murder to arrive at any time (probably will not come until November because I want them to come now, right?) and I am also expecting to get a contributor copy for an anthology I sold a story to–still waiting to get paid as well–so I actually have a vested interest in going to get the mail. Again, probably none of this will come until next month, but I am getting antsy and I am always impatient; something that can inevitably always be counted on is my impatience. I haven’t had a hardcover release in eighteen years or so, so am really looking forward to seeing how beautiful the finished book looks. I love the cover, and the entire thing has been an absolute pleasure every step of the way once the book was finished, you know? I hope you’ve preordered. I am planning on turning this blog into a heavy promotion site soon for the book as well; I’m not really sure what I am doing so bear with me. I’m not exactly sure how to go about doing promotional entries here, either, but hey–it’s something new and different and why shouldn’t I talk about my book here, trying to get people interested enough to read it?
I also came to a hilarious realization yesterday on the current book as I was writing it, and thinking to myself, can you really bring this character back from Scotty’s past when you’ve already mentioned him earlier in the plot? Isn’t that kind of, I don’t know, contrived? And then I started laughing because I had completely forgotten what I was doing with this Scotty book–that no one will probably notice, as no one seems to ever notice what I am doing with my books, but that’s okay; I know and that’s all that matters, right? Anyway, I remembered what the entire point of writing the book was yesterday and now that I’ve actually remembered what I was doing–an homage to Nancy Drew/The Hardy Boys style of crime novels–of course this all will make sense. Besides, the point of the Scotty series is their utter preposterousness; it’s not reality and it doesn’t claim to be; they never have. I also kind of worried because of some similarities to Streetcar–namely, an old family feud no one remembers the root cause behind–but then I laughed at myself yet again. I’ve written over forty books and over fifty short stories at this point in my life; inevitably I am going to repeat plot points and themes.
And on that note, I am heading into the spice mines. Have a lovely day, Constant Reader.
One of the things I’ve greatly enjoyed over the last few years has been the sea change in how publishing views works by non-white and non-straight authors; the push for more diverse voices in the publishing community has already borne wonderful fruit. I’ve been saying for years that the world of crime fiction was in danger of getting stale again, much as it did in the late 1970’s and early 1980’s; particularly the private eye novel. The arrival of Sara Paretsky, Sue Grafton, and Marcia Muller on the scene shook things up and shook things out; the private eye novel got a much-needed shot in the arm of adrenaline with these three women and the others their work inspired; I strongly believe the move toward diversity is going to bear fruit in much the same manner–and it already has, frankly; the works of diverse writers like S. A. Cosby, Kellye Garrett, Rachel Howzell Hall, Alex Segura, Tracy Clark, Cheryl Head, and so many others have joined the great pioneers like Walter Mosley and the wonderful Barbara Neely to open up new perspectives on crime and crime fiction; our society and world; and again, this was desperately needed–and is necessary every so often, for our genre to refresh and expand and become more inclusive. We’re also seeing more queer books being sent out into the world from the big houses in New York, which is also incredibly exciting (another shout out to Yes Daddy By Jonathan Parks-Ramage and A Beautiful Crime by Christopher Bollen).
It’s a very exciting time to be a fan of crime fiction.
Noir has always been one of my favorite sub-genres of crime fiction, and I always enjoy reading modern takes on it. I want to write more noir, quite frankly; Chlorine would be the first of at least four I want to write, if not more (for now, I have ideas for four of them, with Chlorine being the most full formed). I always enjoy modern takes on noir–Laura Lippman’s Sunburn was quite marvelous, as was Christa Faust’s Money Shot and Choke Hold)–and of course, S. A. Cosby is a master of rural Southern noir; both Blacktop Wasteland and Razorblade Tears are destined to be considered classics, I think.
So, I was very curious to read Silvia Moreno-Garcia’s take on modern noir, Velvet Was the Night. It took me a very long time to finish–which is not indicative of the quality of the book, I hasten to add–because after I read so much during the post-Ida power outage, I kind of broke my brain and thus haven’t been able to really focus as much on reading as I would like; yesterday after the LSU game I sat down and finished it with Georgia-Kentucky on as background noise.
And what a fun ride it was.
He didn’t like beating people.
El Elvis realized this was ironic considering his line of work. Imagine that: a thug who wanted to hold his punches. Then again, life is full of such ironies. Consider Ritchie Valens, who was afraid of flying and died the first time he set foot on an airplane. Damn shame that, and the other dudes who died, Buddy Holly and “The Big Bopper” Richardson; they weren’t half bad either. Or there was that playwright Aeschylus. He was afraid of being killed inside his house, and then he steps outside and wham, an eagle tosses a tortoise at him, cracking his head open. Murdered, right there in the stupidest possible way.
Often life doesn’t make sense, and if Elvis had a motto it was that: life’s a mess.That’s probably why he loved music and factoids. They helped him construct a more organized world. When he wasn’t listening to his records, he was poring over the dictionary, trying to memorize a new word, or plowing through one of those almanacs full of stats.
No, sir. Elvis wasn’t like some of the perverts he worked with, who got excited smashing a dude’s kidneys. He would have been happy solving crosswords and sipping coffee like their boss, El Mago, and maybe one day he would be an accomplished man of that sort, but for now there was work to be done, and this time Elvis was actually eager to beat a few motherfuckers up.
He hadn’t developed a sudden taste for blood and cracking bones, no, but El Güero had been at him again.
The recent rise of Silvia Moreno-Garcia has been meteoric, although I am sure to her it has seemed anything but. I read her terrific vampire novel, Certain Dark Things, a while back, loved it, and have been following her career ever since as she has turned out novels at a terrific rate–Gods of Jade and Shadow, Untamed Shore, Mexican Gothic–all of which have been critically acclaimed and sold very well; I love that she bounces from genre to genre–horror to fantasy to crime; even bouncing around in the sub-categories of the crime genre. This is only my second read of her work–I have them all, of course–and had been meaning to get around to her take on noir with a Mexican flourish for quite some time. (I am really sorry I broke my brain with all the reading I did after the power went out; I greatly enjoyed this book, but it was so hard for me to focus for some reason…but am glad I sat down yesterday with the book, determined to finish it at last.)
One of the things that strikes me about Moreno-Garcia’s work is that I am seeing Mexico, a place I greatly love, through a fresh new perspective; like all Yanquis, I always view Mexico through the prism of a tourist. I’ve always wanted to write about Mexico, and have several short stories in the files that are set there (I did write one erotica story as Todd Gregory set in Acapulco; from the perspective of a tourist, of course: “Oh, What A Friend I Have in Jesus”)…but reading Moreno-Garcia makes me aware of how scant my knowledge of our Southern neighbor is–all of the counties south of the Rio Grande, frankly–which is a stinging indictment of our education system. (Don’t even get me started on the concept of Latin America vs. “America”) I know very little of Mexican history after the Spanish conquest, other than the Mexican War and the French empire set up under a Hapsburg by Napoleon III during our civil war. I know very little history of any of the countries that make up the rest of the American continents, really–and isn’t that more than a little bit disgraceful? I also know very little about their cultures, their politics, and what goes on there; a quick glance through the news also will show very little information or news being reported about those non-United States/Canada American countries, which is really a shame.
Velvet Was the Night is set un 1971, a particularly politically rife period in Mexico. The US was terribly concerned about communism being spread by the Soviets in what has always been considered the American soft underbelly–I mean, look at our reaction to Cuba–and there’s no question that CIA operatives and money were working to subvert Communism while supporting borderline Fascist governments because that was preferable to Washington than another potential Soviet satellite state in our hemisphere. The vast paranoia of that time–which really lasted from 1945-1990, really–cannot be underestimated or understated. By rooting her story in actual events of 1971–the crackdown of the Mexican government on dissidents–Moreno-Garcia slyly gives us a taste of how American foreign policy of the time affected everyone in Mexico, as well as a history lesson. (One of the great modern deceptions of our society is this idea that we always act benevolently as a nation; we’re doing this for your own good.) The book has two point of view characters; one, depicted in the opening above, is “Elvis”, a very young man who works as a thug, basically, for an oppressive group of anti-Communists that try to infiltrate dissident groups and haunt protests in order to make them turn violent, so the military can intervene on behalf of the “people.” Elvis grew up very poor and sometimes imagines what his life would be like if he were able to pursue his primary interests–educating himself and music. He doesn’t know what his future holds but is vaguely aware the path he is on–violence and more violence–will not end well. Over the course of the book he begins to question the values he’s been taught to believe in his gang, and begins to aspire to get out of it.
The other main character is Maite, a legal secretary barely getting by on her low salary and barely able to afford food. Her car has been in the shop unclaimed because she cannot afford the mechanics’ bill. She leads a lonely and solitary life, has a very vivid imagination and fantasy world she prefers to inhabit, colored strongly by her love of romance comic books and the music she likes to listen to. Maite’s lovely neighbor, Leonora, asks her to feed her cat while she is away, and when she agreed, Maite unknowingly enters the world of political struggle and upheaval. The riot depicted in the first chapter, that Elvis helps engineer? A friend of Leonora’s has taken pictures that prove that the riot was started by government forces, and those two rolls of film are the McGuffin everyone in the book is after–except poor innocent Maite, who, like any main character in a great Hitchcock film, becomes involved in something life threatening by simply agreeing to feed a neighbor’s cat–something she resents agreeing to do. When Leonora doesn’t come back, Maite starts looking for her–primarily motivated by the fact she can’t afford to keep feeding the car, and Leonora promised her money for feeding it–money she needs to get her car back. Motivated by her own poverty, Maite finds herself getting involved more and more in this clandestine world, and her own life is in danger soon.
The true strength of the book lies in the careful characterizations of both Elvis and Maite; two desperate people trapped by poverty in lives they want to escape, and the parallel journeys they both follow that lead their paths to cross; and the richness of the reality of what life in Mexico City was like during the turbulent time when the book is set. Moreno-Garcia shows us, as she did in Certain Dark Things, what the reality of life is like in one of the world’s largest cities, the reality the tourists rarely, if ever, get a chance to see. And while the hopelessness of both their situations seem unresolvable at times, the pacing is strong and the story construction so tight, and you the readers finds yourself rooting for them both to get out safely.
I really loved this book, and am sorry my inability to focus forced me to take so long to finish reading it. It’s extraordinary, and I recommend it highly.
Queer and Loathing in America 