Sunday morning and all is calm in the house. I feel good, very well-rested and cheerful, which of course is lovely. The Sparkster let me sleep in till almost eight, and now I am finishing my first cup of coffee and have already had this morning’s slice of chocolate marble swirl coffee cake (can’t imagine why I can’t lose weight, can you?), and am about to get another cup of coffee. I did get some things done yesterday, which is cool, and have more things to do today as well. I have one errand to run later this morning, and I’m going to get that out of the way, come home and get cleaned up and get back into working for a bit. Yesterday was a lovely day. I worked some more on the apartment, and delved even more deeply into my renamed main character in the current work. I’m also going to try writing it in the first person present tense, which is going to be really hard for me. (I tend to always use first person past tense.)
The best part of writing a book is this part–even if a lot of this background work never makes it into the finished part.
I’ve been listening a lot to old Fleetwood Mac albums in the car lately, and while they’ve always been my favorite band of all time–every album is a gem, in its own way–when I go for a while without listening I sometimes forget why they are my favorite band of all time. This past week I was listening to their Christine McVie-less recording from the early aughts, Say You Will, which is really good, but kind of Buckingham Nicks 2.0, really. I also like watching Youtube videos of young people listening to their recordings for the first time, and appreciating the artistry, talent, sound, and production values. Rumours will always be my favorite album of all time, and my favorite album of theirs, but the others are also excellent and merit more listening.
We watched this week’s episode of Heated Rivalry, which was probably the best, and most engaging, episode of the show thus far (I loved episode 3, spoiler alert); the first time I cared whether the main characters were just fuck buddies or a couple slowly falling in love. I still have some thoughts about the show, some quibbles as it were, mostly about relationship roles and the feminization of bottoms, but that can wait till I’ve finished watching the show and review it for the newsletter. (I’m still bitter about the cancelation of Boots, but…they also could have seriously fucked up a second season, so I’m choosing to see this cancelation, evil as it was, as a good thing.)
I did have the college football games on yesterday, but the only one we watched was Miami-Texas A&M, which was the only good game of the day. We turned off the later games to watch other things once it was clear they were not going to be competitive. Despite their blowout losses, good for both Tulane and James Madison for having breakout seasons and making it to the playoffs before a lot of name brand schools did. I don’t know if I’ll watch the quarterfinals or not; I don’t care who wins but I am also not a big fan of any school still left in it–although I always pull for underdogs, so I kind of would like to see Indiana do well–so am not sure.
I did finally finish reading The Postman Always Rings Twice yesterday; it’s really a nasty little book, isn’t it? I now can see why it was controversial; for one, it’s told from the villain’s point of view, which may or may not have been shocking to readers in the 1930s. (This particular reread also made me realize I need to delve more deeply into Chlorine and my main character–who he is, what he wants–and very glad I did; this reread was crucial.) Postman also deserves its own newsletter (I need to get some of the others done and out of the way already, don’t I?), where I can talk about this vicious little novella that changed everything in the crime fiction genre (I”m talking out of my ass here, but I would imagine it did challenge the sensibilities of readers conditioned to Christie, Queen, and Sayers, among many others), and its impact on me, both as a writer and a reader. I also generally don’t revisit Postman often; usually I just revisit Double Indemnity and Mildred Pierce, but am very glad I did. It made me see what was wrong with what I had already done on this book.
I also gave my main character a new stage name–because the old one really didn’t work. It was more modern than the weird names movie stars were given in the late 1940s and early 1950s (Tab Hunter, Rock Hudson, Troy Donahue), and so yesterday one of those dopey names came to me as I was cleaning the house; and realized it would work, plus would help define the amorality and narcissism in the character. I will reuse the working name for him in another book, certainly–it’s a good name–but this new one is even better.
And on that note, I am heading into the spice mines. The sun is shining outside (it’s gorgeous out, just as it was yesterday), and I still have some things to do this morning. I’m going to start reading the new Eli Cranor. methinks, while also revisiting a classic juvenile series mystery from one of my favorite juvenile series. I also have some short stories I want to work on, too. Have a lovely Sunday, Constant Reader, and I will be back in the morning before I head in for my last two work days before Christmas.
Queer and Loathing in America 