Tag: Neighborhood Alert

I Know a Place

Saturday morning in the Lost Apartment and all is well. I slept incredibly last night. I woke up at seven and stayed in bed relaxing in a half-sleep for another hour or so, and finally got up when Sparky woke up and decided he was hungry. He was delayed this morning–and was very calm and cuddly and sleepy yesterday–because of the vaccines he got yesterday, as well as the shock to his system of leaving the apartment. He likes his carrier–he’ll go in there on his own, and Paul often tells him to go get in the crate when he’s having Big Kitten Energy, which he does–but he finally started meowing yesterday when we took him outside in the crate. He’s never meowed before, only chirped, which worried me a bit…but now he’s done it so I guess he only meows when he’s unhappy. His nails were trimmed (which he also didn’t like this time), but we brought him home to be a sleepy, cuddly sweet kitty for the rest of the night. We also went to Costco yesterday, which was nice and a little tiring. We watched Skate America last night (ladies and pairs short programs) and of course, today is a football all day kind of day. LSU plays at Arkansas tonight, and of course Alabama-Tennessee is this afternoon’s game. I am going to take books to the library sale this morning and go to the grocery store today before I come home to watch games for the rest of the day. There’s also some cleaning I can do around here this morning, too. Yippee!

I’m also going to read some more of Gabino’s book this morning; I read some while Sparky and Paul were with the vet yesterday and I just love the way he writes, in this interesting combination of Jim Thompson crossed with some John D. MacDonald but heavily flavored and filtered through his own remarkable talent in a unique voice that is entirely his own. It’s very rare to come across a writer with a voice and style so strikingly original, and the pacing is ethereal but also fast at the same time. I loved his last book, and I am absolutely loving this own. Next weekend I’ll be heading up to Kentucky to see Dad for about a week, so I can listen to another horror novel in the car (maybe Shadowland by Peter Straub, which I’ve not read before. I can take the paperback with me if the audio book is too long for a twelve hour drive; I actually just went to Audible and got Nick Cutter’s The Troop, and saw that I had a Riley Sager already downloaded, so that’s the trip up and back sorted. I also got the Straub), and I can take some horror with me to read. I’ll make shrimp tempura for dinner tonight, and am kind of torn about making chili or not tomorrow, but will probably go ahead and do so; I may even make it over night so tomorrow morning I can just get up and put it in the refrigerator. That’ll sort my lunches for the week, methinks.

I also managed to get the majority of the dishes done yesterday, no small feat I might add. That’ll teach me to be lazy when I get home from work every day, won’t it? It seemed endless, and I was also doing the bed linens at the same time as well as unpacking Costco and putting everything away; the living room is, even now, filled with empty boxes that need to go out this morning. I need to revise that short story and start working on another one for the Bouchercon anthology open call; I picked out the story just have to finish it now, which is also no easy chore. But today is an official day off from everything other than relaxation, reading and some cleaning around the house. I’ll try to reread the story I’ve selected; I just need to remember to channel my rage at developments in the neighborhood and on my street–this is one of the reasons I love being a writer, petty revenge on people who’ll never even know they inspired me to kill them in fiction–and retrieve that voice from deep inside my head. I think one of the problems I’ve had with some of the stories I’ve been writing lately is I’ve been too lazy to write about people the way they really are, instead of an idealized character who is logical and rational and then simply snaps. It’s that breakdown of going from law-abiding to murderous that I live to explore–it worked really well in “Neighborhood Alert”–but in some of the noirish stories I’ve been trying to write and sell since the pandemic they come across as too cheerful; bitterness and rage is what drives my stories, and the tone and voice need to reflect that.

Tone and voice are key to whether your story works or not.

And on that note, I am heading into the spice mines. Have a lovely day, Constant Reader, and I’ll check in with you again later. GEAUX TIGERS!

Screenshot

The Look of Love

Saturday morning. I was incorrect about the department meeting; it’s later this month (when I’ll be in Bethesda, actually) so I went to the health fair, was told I should increase my exercise (duh, since I do none now) and other than that, I appear to be perfectly healthy–or at least per my vitals and blood work, at any rate.

How fortunate they weren’t testing for mental stability, eh?

But it was a lovely day to work-at-home. It was still cold overnight, but the high yesterday hovered in the high seventies, topping out at a solid, spring-like eighty degrees at one point in the afternoon, which was also nice. I filed and cleaned when taking breaks from work; laundered the bed linens, finished off the dishes, and straightened the rugs as well as sweeping and vacuuming. We got caught up on Yellowjackets and The Mandalorian, and while I was waiting for Paul to come home from the gym, I rewatched this week’s Ted Lasso with the captions on so I could catch things I missed on first viewing (something I do with every episode, as I did with Schitt’s Creek), and I have to say I enjoyed it a lot more on the second viewing than I did on the first. I am very curious to see where the show is going and how it’s going to end–but unlike everyone else, I’ve decided to not theorize about it or jump to conclusions predicated on my interpretation of what I’ve seen; instead I just want to enjoy the ride and trust the writers to do their jobs, which they’ve done superbly on every step of the journey thus far.

I slept really well last night and feel very rested this morning. I have to get the mail today and I should make a small grocery run while I am out, but ugh, how I hate the grocery store lately. It saps my strength and will and makes me want to curl up with Scooter and pretend the rest of the world doesn’t exist anymore out there. There’s not much we really need, to be completely honest; but I need to know what I want to make for dinner this weekend and what I am going to be taking for lunch next week. Decisions, decisions–but it feels good to be rested and clear-headed this morning. I don’t know that I feel particularly inspired this morning, but that’s okay. Once I finish this, I am taking my coffee and repairing to my easy chair to read Scorched Grace, which I hope to finish this weekend.

Anne Perry, a very successful author, died this week. She had an unfortunate past, having committed the crime that Peter Jackson’s film Beautiful Creatures was based on (also known as the film that gave us Kate Winslet and Melanie Lynskey) as a teenager, and served her time. I didn’t know Ms. Perry, nor have I ever read any of her work. This wasn’t out of any sense of oh I can’t possible be supportive of her! She killed someone! but more because they weren’t the kind of stories I particularly enjoy. I did ride in an elevator with her once at a Bouchercon, and she was polite, reservedly friendly (understandable), and seemed kind. I’ve been thinking lately that I’d like to read more historical crime fiction, particularly around the first World War (looking at you, Charles Todd!), but that TBR stack is already way too deep and tall and wide. However, Ms. Perry’s death has, of course, brought all that about her teenaged crime back into the news and onto social media to be rehashed and discussed and, well, frankly beaten into the ground. Ms. Perry’s situation also is key to a broader discussion about criminal justice, and our criminal justice system and how it operates. (Ms. Perry’s crime was committed in Australia, I believe.) I see a lot of people talking about how they don’t believe in redemption, and how they could never bring themselves to support someone who’d done something so terrible, etc. etc. etc. And it’s very true; we as a society tend to look askance at people who’ve served time in prison–and tend to judge them harshly.

How can you believe in a criminal justice system if you don’t believe in the potential of human redemption? I’m not an expert on any of this stuff, let me make that very clear at this point. I am merely examining this from a layman’s perspective and coming from a logical place to try to dissect all of this with nuance and rationality; what can I say, I took Geometry in high school and was on the debate team. I don’t think you can believe in our criminal justice system if you don’t believe in redemption, which seems kind of Old Testament to me; once a criminal always a criminal is what that boils down to, and if there is never even the slightest possibility that someone can be redeemed, what is the point of jailing them? Punishment? That seems kind of draconian and not very humanist, frankly. The odds are stacked against convicts as it is when they are released; as most of us will always keep an eye at them in askance, just waiting for them to commit another crime to prove that they belong in jail and should never be released. I understand the sex-offender registry–women and children are vulnerable and should be aware someone who may be a predator is living in their area now–but at the same time, it feels….punitive. Sex crimes are horrible, to be sure, but if they are so horrible and the offender is statistically going to commit the same kind of crime again–why let them out in the first place? Getting one of those flyers back when we lived on Camp Street is what inspired me to write my short story “Neighborhood Alert,” which is one of my favorite stories that I’ve done, and tried to use the story to illustrate the potential consequences that can come from such alerts.

I also think it’s interesting that people are so unforgiving in real life while they will read–and root for–characters like Tom Ripley or Hannibal Lector or Dexter. But that’s fiction, they say in response, to which I say so you would be repulsed by them if they were real, but you root for them in fiction? Make it make sense to me.

Ultimately, she did her time for her crime, and then spent the rest of her life writing crime novels successfully. Enough people either didn’t know about her past, or didn’t care enough to make them give up the pleasure of reading her work. As I said, I’ve not read her work but it’s not out of any sense of moral outrage or superiority, but because they aren’t the kind of books I ordinarily read–although now I kind of want to read one, to see how good she was. If you don’t want to read her, or didn’t, because of her past that’s your choice and your decision. But please don’t think for one moment you have the right to tell me what I can or cannot read, or what I can or cannot enjoy–because then you are no better than right-wingers trying to ban books and close libraries, and that is something I will not, do not, and cannot, support on any level.

I also kind of believe that redemption is possible, but not unless there is atonement and a desire to change. If I didn’t believe that, well, I don’t know how I could live with myself. This is a question I explored in my nasty little story “This Thing of Darkness”–can you atone for something terrible you did as a teenager? Especially if you are never punished for the crime itself? How do you live with yourself with such a thing on your conscience? (This is also the theme for one of my favorite books of all times, Thomas Thompson’s Celebrity)

And on that note, I am making another cup of coffee and heading to the chair with Margot Douaily. Have a lovely Saturday, Constant Reader, and I’ll be back here again tomorrow, as always.

Seven Wonders

If I live to see the seven wonders, I’ll make a path to the rainbow’s end…

It’s 49 degrees here in New Orleans this morning–it could have been worse, and was predicted to be worse–so I can’t complain too much. It’s chilly inside the apartment this morning, but I have on my sweats and a stocking cap and feel okay. I didn’t want to get out of the warmth of the bed this morning–who can blame me–but I do feel somewhat rested this morning, which is always an enormous plus. I managed to not feel exhausted yesterday, so I managed to reconfigure Chapter Five so it is no longer a steaming pile of crap and now feel like I can move on to Chapter Six. Huzzah! Progress, Constant Reader, we are making progress at long last and it feels marvelous. We also watched this week’s Reboot (seriously, y’all, this show is hilarious and marvelous and you should be watching) and started the new season of The Vow on HBO–remember the NXIVM cult? They got a second season, which is going to be interesting as it covers the trials and has interviews with some of those higher-ups who pled guilty…but I am not seeing the cult leaders who finally woke up and brought them down as heroic, frankly. I have mixed feelings about them, to be honest; when they finally turned they really turned, but they were also involved for years and recruited lots of people–especially women–to the group, so I don’t know. There’s something to be said for atonement, I suppose, which is one of those esoteric philosophical questions about crime and punishment and our legal system (I’ve always felt conflicted, for example, about the sex offenders’ registry; I totally get why the neighborhood should know a convicted sex offender has moved into the neighborhood but at the same time it feels like a continuation of their punishment–either you do the time and are rehabilitated or you’re not…this conflict of fairness in my mind is what led me to write my story “Neighborhood Alert”).

I actually listened to my Sisters in Crime podcast interview with Julie Hennrikus (I tend to avoid listening to recordings of my voice, as I don’t like how I sound) for a change, and started to wonder about this distaste I have for hearing my voice. I don’t sound to myself anything like I sound on recordings, so for one thing it’s jarring to my sense of self (“that’s what other people hear when I talk?”), kind of like photographs, and there’s a bit of an effeminacy to my voice, I think–or that I hear–that makes me uncomfortable–and as I listened last night (it’s an interesting conversation, and Julie is a marvelous interviewer) I began to wonder why I hate the sound of my voice so much. There’s nothing wrong with sounding effeminate, so why does it get under my skin the way it does? It makes little to no sense, and it’s definitely something to do with the self-loathing I developed as a child from being an outsider. But after I started listening, after a while I stopped cringing as my voice came out of the computer speakers and started paying attention. Julie is a marvelous conversationalist/interviewer, and I felt like I didn’t come across as a pompous and arrogant fool who doesn’t really know what he’s talking about, which is also a plus. (I’ve always felt that authors should be good interviews, since they are story-tellers; the interviewer’s job is to prod the subject into telling an entertaining story–which I think is another part of it; I tend to think my life and my writing processes and anecdotes aren’t terribly interesting, which again goes to the core of self-deprecation and humility that I am trying to break as it is not only counter-intuitive but it’s a bad quality for an author to have…I am always so afraid I’m going to sound arrogant and ungrateful that I tend to go too far the other way.)

But now that I am working on my aversion to hearing my voice, I can listen to the other podcast i recently recorded with Ricky Grove, about My Cousin Rachel, you can listen by clicking here if you like. I am actually now looking forward to listening myself–now that I am getting over my aversion to my own voice–and listening to myself more regularly will help me conquer that aversion, yank it out by the roots, as it were. Working on improving myself will clearly never stop until I breathe my last, will it?

I’m hoping to have a productive day, really. I feel rested, my brain isn’t feeling fatigued, and I feel more alert than I did earlier this week. I need to get some life-function things to do (make sure all bills are listed on calendar; remake my to-do list) and tonight after work I am hoping to be able to sit down and bang out Chapter Six, as well as perhaps read some more into ‘salem’s Lot while I wait for Paul to get home from work. I think I’ve pretty much decided not to make the trip to Boston for Crime Bake–flying back and two weeks later having to drive to Kentucky sounds exhausting and like way too much for me already–plus with the book deadline looming over everything, that makes it less promising to take a second trip before the deadline, alas–so it’s probably smarter for me to go ahead and cancel that trip…but I may keep the time off I’ve requested so I can work on the book. Hmmm, decisions, decisions. But I also need to be able to take time off to go to New York in January for my last hurrah for Mystery Writers of America…so who knows? Maybe I should just cancel the vacation requests and work? I don’t know. I hate making decisions because I am so certain that I will make the wrong one…

See how insidious that self-deprecating self-loathing thing is? It pops up everywhere. Why can I never make a decision that either makes sense for me or with confidence that I’m making the right one? Sigh, I don’t know and probably never will, I suppose.

And on that cheery note, I am heading into the spice mines. Have a lovely day, Constant Reader and I will talk to you again tomorrow.

Clean

Hello, Friday, how are you doing?

In spite of all that’s going on in the rest of the state, yesterday was a lovely day for me personally because I got my electronic copy of Mystery Tribune which contains my story, “The Carriage House” (which you can order here). This is my second time in Mystery Tribune; the first was with my story “Neighborhood Alert”. Mystery Tribune is a gorgeously done magazine, and whenever I have some spare cash (HA!) I am going to subscribe; I really should subscribe to the magazines that support crime short stories. Bad Greg, bad Greg!

A while back, Constant Reader might remember me talking about the illusion of privacy and safety we all have when we are in our homes, even when you live in very close proximity to your neighbors, as we do here in New Orleans. From my desk I can see the right apartment of the carriage house on our property, the carriage house next door, and the apartment on the left side of the house next door. Our apartment shares a wall with our neighbors to the front and our neighbor to the side, and the upstairs shares walls with the neighbors to the front and our landlady, with whom we also share the patio deck (which we never use), and yet…we feel safe and secure and private in our apartment, and it always kind of throws me when someone walks past my “office” windows. Anyway, “The Carriage House” is a story about precisely that; living in close proximity to other people and how it also, occasionally, means knowing more about each other than perhaps you might want to or should.

It was a little after three when my cat woke me up by sitting on my chest and howling.

I wanted to ignore him–I could tell without opening my eyes it was still dark out–but when he started kneading my chest with his claws out, I gave up. “Seriously, Skittle?”  I asked, reaching for my glasses, noticing my alarm’s glowing red numbers read 3:12.

He yowled again. There were four different sounds, each with its own meaning, in his repertoire. This was the water noise. Cursing myself for not making sure his water bowl was full before going to bed, I slipped on my slippers and pulled my robe on as I walked out of the bedroom. Skittle galloped down the stairs ahead of me. I was reaching for the kitchen light-switch when I saw movement outside the windows.

I caught my breath but relaxed when I recognized Peyton.

He’d been renting my carriage house for a few months, but having a tenant was still such a novelty for me that I still forgot I had one. I’d used the carriage house as a kind of combination guest house/office for years, but I’d decided to turn into a rental property to relieve some financial distress. I wasn’t happy having someone else on the property, but the extra money  was lovely.  And I couldn’t have found a better tenant than Peyton. He was quiet, paid the rent on time, and if he maybe had a few more overnight guests than I would have preferred–well, he was still only in his late twenties. He worked as an EMT, savibg lives, and who was I to judge if he liked to bring the occasional man home?

He also had a habit of sunbathing in the back yard in a skimpy yellow bikini that left little to the imagination.

It also didn’t hurt that he was handsome. He was just over six feet tall and jogged every morning on the neutral ground on St. Charles. Several nights a week he’d walk past my windows drenched in sweat and carrying a gym bag.

Not a bad beginning, no?

Several months ago I sent five stories out on submission, and within twenty-four hours two of them sold. A few more weeks passed and another one sold; I did get a rejection from a rather high-end market on my birthday, but I knew they were going to turn me down (I don’t write lit-RAH-choor, you know–but it never hurts to try every once in a while. I haven’t heard back on the fifth yet, but I am also assuming that if I do hear from them (I’m not entirely confident I will, frankly, even rate a rejection from them) it will be a thanks-but-no-thanks. But it’s fine, I don’t care, and sometimes my stories get rejected because, well, it may have needed another pass or two, or I had something wrong, or something was frankly missing from it–that I’ll find the next time I take a good look at it. But there’s no mistaking that I’ve had a good couple of years of short story sales and publications, and that has everything to do with the Short Story Project and taking the time to write them, edit them, clean them up and work them out, you know?

I am trying to decide if I should write and submit something for the New Orleans Bouchercon anthology; I’ve also come across two other calls that look interesting and I may try to get something submitted to both. I do have eighty-six or so stories in some sort of progress now; perhaps there’s something in the files that could be finished and could work for either or both of them. Or…I could write something entirely new for them. Who knows?

Anyway, yay for short stories!

IMG_4097

Sexy Northerner

So, who had “this revision won’t be as easy as Greg thought it would be” on their Gregalicious trials-and-travails bingo card?

Well, congratulations, you were correct. This reminds me of the time when I thought, oh I’ll just turn this Scotty manuscript into a Chanse, it’ll be easy and no, it really wasn’t. It was actually a nightmare, but eventually, after much anguish, stress, and aggravation, I did get it done and I was pretty pleased with the final outcome. I got up early yesterday morning and wrote an entirely new first chapter of Bury Me in Shadows, and one that was much better than any of the original attempts, so there’s that. Chapter Two was more of a slog, since I was trying to save more material so I wouldn’t have to write new material, but it’s going to need some going over again to make sure the transition from the old original story to the new is seamless. On the plus side–there’s always a plus side, even if I have to really dig deep down for it–the new material I am writing is good, and I like this iteration of the character much better than I did in the previous drafts; and his backstory is much better than it was originally. I also love the new opening. And making these changes actually eliminates a big hole in the story–something I could never really quite figure out–it was one of those things that had to happen for the story to happen, but it only made sense in THAT context, and that was driving me completely insane.

You can’t do that. It’s called “contrivance,” and there’s nothing that makes me more irritated or annoyed with a writer (or a movie or a TV show) where something happens only because it’s necessary for the story and only makes sense in that particular context. (I mean, obviously you can, and plenty of writers do, but it’s fucking lazy, and you shouldn’t, and if you do, and your editor doesn’t stop you…yeah, well.)

I also spent some time with Kelly J. Ford’s Cottonmouths, which I am really enjoying. I just wish I had more time to read, you know? I am so fucking far behind on my reading.

We also started watching HBO’s I’ll Be Gone in the Dark, which is very well done and very creepy. One of the things that terrifies me–which therefore also interests and fascinates me–is the concept of not being safe in your own home; that we all have this incredible illusion of security and safety in our homes–and neighborhoods, for that matter–and so we often are caught off-guard or by surprise by violence, or, as the theorists would say, the introduction of a Dionysian element into our safe, secure worlds. “The Carriage House” is that kind of story; so is “Neighborhood Alert” to a degree, as is the one I just sold, “Night Follows Night,” which is about not being safe in a supermarket because that was something I thought was interesting; you never think you aren’t safe in a bright public place full of employees and other shoppers until you actually aren’t. This is something Stephen King does very well; the introduction of something Dionysian into an ordinary, sedate, everyday kind of environment, and how normal everyday people react in those kinds of situations; some rise to the challenge, others do not.

Anyway, I’ll Be Gone in the Dark is just that–a true crime documentary based on the book by the late Michelle McNamara about her investigation into the Golden State Killer, and how that all came about. When you listen to the stories of the victims, and remember what it was like in in the 1970’s for women who were raped (not that things have gotten much better since then, but at least as bad as it is now it’s not as bad as it was then–not a laurel we as a society should be resting on any time soon, frankly), but how the rapes and murders happened in these quiet middle class suburban type enclaves where no one ever expected anything bad to ever happen (I’ve always wanted to write a book based on a murder that happened in the suburb of Chicago I lived in during my early teens; the killer and one of the accomplices were students at my high school; I knew the accomplice’s two younger sisters quite well); and I also lived in Fresno during the later part of the Golden State Killer’s run–but he had moved on to Southern California by then. I was stuck by the old footage of these neighborhoods in Sacramento, and how like our neighborhood in Fresno (Clovis, actually; a suburb of Fresno) and how closed off the houses were from their neighbors and the street–with small front yards and an enormous garage in the very front of the houses, which were in U shapes. My bedroom was the other side of the U from the garage and there were bars on the windows so no one could ever come in. My curtains were always closed so I could never see out onto the street or no one could see in; every once in a while on nights when I couldn’t sleep I would scare myself by thinking if I opened the curtains someone would be there–because it was very easy to get to, even if the bars precluded anyone from getting inside. Sliding glass doors were also very popular in houses back then, if not the most secure thing to have in your house, really.

And naturally, I started writing a short story in my head while I watched, about a bickering couple who come home early from a party because they got into a fight and are still fighting as they pull into their driveway and arguing still as they go into the house where they find their fifteen year old daughter bound and gagged in the living room with the sliding glass door to the backyard and pool area open, the curtains blowing in the night breeze. I don’t know the whole story, or how it ends, or even where it goes from there–which is why I have so many unfinished short stories in my files.

Heavy sigh.

There’s a tornado watch in Terrebonne and Lafourche parishes this morning, which probably means rain for most (or part) of the day here as well. It seems kind of gloomy and overcast out there, but brighter than it has been the last three mornings–when it rained a lot–so we’ll see how this day goes.

But it’s Monday, the start of a new week, and here’s hoping that I’ll be able to find time to not only read this week but time to work on the manuscript. Perchance to dream, I suppose.

Have a lovely week, Constant Reader!

Breaking Up Is Hard To Do

So, this came this week:

IMG_6302.jpg

Pretty cool, right? I really like the cover.

This, on the inside, is also kind of cool.

IMG_6301

Yes, that’s the two page illustrated title page for my short story, “Neighborhood Alert,” which is in the spring issue of Mystery Tribune magazine.

I know, right? Gregalicious is breathing some rarified air these days!

Wonder of wonders, Trish found a parking space in front of her townhouse on Euterpe Street, which hardly ever happened. A good omen, she thought as she grabbed her purse and the reusable cloth grocery bag from the passenger seat. It was cold for New Orleans, down in the thirties. An overnight rain with a cold front right behind it had dropped the temperature thirty degrees. The city was in a hard freeze warning overnight. She wasn’t sure if her pipes were in danger, but always ran the water to be on the safe side. She couldn’t imagine the hell of busted pipes. She lived in constant fear of something going wrong with her townhouse—termites, ants, broken pipes, the ground shifting. She had some money put aside, but not enough for any of those catastrophes.

She clicked the key fob to lock her car and frowned. Her gate was ajar. She would have sworn she’d closed and locked it, but it was such an automatic habit she couldn’t be sure. She’d been having trouble sleeping, which made her foggy in the mornings. She wasn’t sure what was causing it; her doctor said to cut back on caffeine, but if she didn’t sleep well at night and was groggy in the morning, how was she supposed to do her job without drinking some coffee? She’d compromised, giving up on extra shots of espresso and just having regular coffee…but was still restless at night, tossing and turning and waking up to stare at the ceiling. She shut the gate and locked it with the key. The wrought iron fence was tall, spikes on the top, and since she started living alone, she made sure the gate was locked whenever she was home. Anyone wanting in had to ring the buzzer, and she could check from the safety of the house to see whether she wanted to let them in. She grabbed the catalogues and junk mail from the mailbox, wondering who still used catalogues and slipped it all into her grocery bag. She tried to reduce her carbon footprint by recycling and not using the disposable grocery bags, but she still felt guilty driving to and from work every day. It wasn’t even a mile, but she rationalized that her company paid for her parking space whether she used it or not, and the St. Charles streetcar was two blocks from her front door and four blocks from her office—not bearable in heels or the heat of the summer.

And at least, she reasoned, she did feel guilty about it. Most people didn’t even think about it.

As she unlocked the front door, a sheet of paper sailed out and came to rest on the third step of the hanging staircase. She frowned, shutting the door and turning the deadbolt. There was a mail slot on the front door that wasn’t used anymore; not since she’d installed the big fence, buzzer and gate lock after the divorce. She’d left the gate unlocked and someone had slipped something—a sales notice, probably, or a lost pet flyer—through the mail slot.

I wrote “Neighborhood Alert” last year, during that period of time when I was focusing on writing short stories, early in 2018, and I’d originally intended for it to be included in Survivor’s Guilt and Other Stories. I honestly don’t recall why I decided to submit it to Mystery Tribune, but I did one day and then kind of forgot about it. (I do have a spreadsheet where I keep track of submission dates and markets, but I wasn’t making notes on the calendar yet–which I now do, so I can check on the submissions and so forth; I am trying to get better organized, Constant Reader, I AM!) As I was pulling everything together for Survivor’s Guilt and Other Stories, I always included “Neighborhood Alert,” so you can imagine my surprise when I got the email from Mystery Tribune that they wanted to publish my story! Huzzah, indeed! I then had to put a different story in the collection, but I got a rejection from Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine  and I swapped that story in for the this one, and problem solved.

“Neighborhood Alert” first came to me as an idea years ago, when someone put one of those ‘registered sex offender in the neighborhood’ flyers through our mail slot when we lived on Camp Street. On the one hand, I certainly understood the neighborhood’s right to know there was a convicted predator moving in; on the other hand, he’d served his time and how can you move forward with your life when everyone in the neighborhood knows about your crimes? I wrote the idea down in a journal, and when I was going through my journals last year during that manic short story writing period, it occurred to me, what if you’d lost your only child to a predator, and then a few years later you get a one of these alerts?

This was the story that resulted from that thought. And I am very proud that it’s my first publication in Mystery Tribune.

And it will be in my next collection.

And now back to the spice mines. Happy Friday, everyone.

Wake Up Everybody

Well, I finished reading Jamie Mason’s The Hidden Things yesterday (spoiler: it’s terrific and you should pre-order it, like right now; more on it later) and then started Rachel Howzell Hall’s They All Fall Down, which is also off to a terrific start.

You really can never go wrong with a crime novel written by a woman, frankly.

So, of course last night Game of Thrones ended, and I have to say I was satisfied, if not thrilled, by how it ended. Some of it was inevitable, and to be honest, I couldn’t wrap my mind around how it would all end; I absolutely hated the idea of Jon as king–he’s not the type, quite frankly, but will admit I was also all in for Sansa. So, in a way, I got what I wanted with Sansa being Queen in the North–but having a separate kingdom to the north will inevitably lead to problems with the Six Kingdoms; and what exactly ever happened to the cities Dany conquered in Essos? I was more sad to see the show end than I could ever be disappointed in how it ended; as I said to Paul, “You know, when we first started watching this show, we still had cable, didn’t stream anything, and we watched this on DVD’s that came in the mail from Netflix before giving in and paying for HBO again. We didn’t have Scooter yet, and we still  had our old television with a DVD player.”  Game of Thrones, no matter what you thought of it to begin with, whether you watched it or you didn’t, was a cultural event in this country (I am reluctant to say world, as that reeks of American exceptionalism, but I do believe the show was a world-wide phenomenon) that had everyone talking about it almost from the very beginning, and maybe was the last show of its kind–the kind where everyone waits patiently to watch, week after week, and everyone talks about and discusses and argues about. I don’t think we’ll see its like again; I doubt another show will ever take up as much room in the public discourse as Game of Thrones did.

And while everything was sort of tied up nicely with a ribbon last evening, as the credits rolled I turned to Paul and said, “What happened to the Dothraki? We know what happened to the Unsullied…but they never said what happened to the Dothraki.”

I guess they are just loose in Westeros?

I started working on one of my short stories yesterday; I couldn’t find the motivation to do much else of anything, to be honest. I did clean some and get some things organized, and of course, I was also busy reading, as I mentioned above, and I am kind of excited to be reading They All Fall Down, which is off to a really good start. I was feeling a bit overwhelmed this past weekend, if I am going to be completely honest, and while I am not feeling as overwhelmed this morning as I’ve been feeling, I am still in one of those “how am I going to get all of this done?” places this morning. But you know, it will all get done and I will handle everything that needs handling because I somehow always manage to do so.

As you might recall, I sold my story “Neighborhood Alert” to Mystery Tribune magazine; I am proud to say it appears in the quarterly issue that is now available as e-magazine or print editions; you can order it right here.

I like the story, and I hope you will like it, too.

I really need to get more stories out.

And on that note, it’s back to the spice mines with me.

192702_192556024114367_100000799113999_397171_534232_o

Love Machine

Ah, Monday of the week that ends with the tenting and the Weekend o’Festivals. Just thinking about getting through this week and this weekend makes me tired. Very tired.

We started moving perishables and other things that could be poisoned by the termite gas over to the carriage house yesterday; even as we did so, I kept remembering and finding more things that need to go over there. I’ve never experienced termite genocide before, that oh-so-uniquely New Orleans experience that so many others have before multiple times. It’s got me thinking about the possibility of murder by termite tent, of course–although I am pretty certain I’ve read a book where that happened, I think it was by Elaine Viets.

Murder-a-Go-Go’s officially releases today as well, so those who preordered it should be getting it delivered to your electronic reading devices and those who ordered hard-copies should be getting them soon. Huzzah! I love book birthdays; my own for Survivor’s Guilt and Other Stories is soon to come; April 10th, officially. Order, order, order! And don’t forget, the first ever Chanse MacLeod short story is in this book!

I reread my story for Murder-a-Go-Go’s again yesterday, primarily because another idea came to me yesterday, which I shared on social media: Someone really needs to write a spring break noir called WHERE THE BOYS DIE and I would read the hell out of that. I do think that’s a terrific idea; is there any better setting for a noir than a small beach town taken over by tens of thousands of partying college students? (I also had another idea for a book, based on an actual brutal murder that took place over spring break several decades ago; hat tip to Scott Heim for reminding me of that murder) I had always wanted to do one over the course of Southern Decadence weekend as well; I still might do that one. Anyway, I’m digressing. So, on my post about Where the Boys Die some suggested I write it, others that it sounded like an anthology, and then Jessica Laine said, you already wrote this story for MURDER-A-GO-GO’S, and I loved your story. 

The thing about being a writer is that all-too-often you don’t remember things about your work once it’s finished. “This Town,” my story for Murder-a-Go-Go’s, is one of my favorite stories that I’ve ever written, to be honest; I think it’s also one of my best. But, when I read Kristopher Zgorski’s lovely review and he singled out my story as one of many for individual praise, and then seeing Jessica’s lovely comment, I decided I should probably reread the story since my recollection of what I actually wrote was so vague…and there it was. Constant Reader, it’s good. I then pulled up my story “Neighborhood Alert,” which is going to be published in Mystery Tribune, and it, too, is good. This was revelatory for me; as I may have mentioned, another story of mine was recently rejected by Alfred Hitchcock’s Mystery Magazine, and that had, of course, put me into a bit of a tailspin as far as my writing of short stories was concerned…astonishing at how easy it is to have one’s confidence in one’s own work shattered, isn’t it?

And that also got me to thinking about the second Chanse short story, “Once a Tiger,” that has tragically been stalled for so long. Short stories are actually more intimate than novels; in that you have much less space to develop a story and less room for characters so it has to be scaled back some. “Once a Tiger” is struggling because, quite simply, there are too many characters in it; how does one investigate a death at a fraternity house on a college campus when there would have to be well over a hundred brothers and pledges? That was where I struggled with the story; even the police would have trouble sorting all of this out, so imagine the trouble Chanse would have with it, working alone as he does. I still want to write a murder mystery set at Chanse’s LSU fraternity, where Chanse has to come back and solve the crime, but I just don’t–at the moment–see how that can be done as a short story. Maybe now that I’ve said that it will come to me–just like the other day, how to weave the two plots for the next Scotty book came to me from out of nowhere.

I love when that happens.

And now back to the spice mines.

51807918_2082001481887309_3231561375222333440_o

O Holy Night

The last day of 2018. I can hear the garbage trucks outside getting the trash, which means I’ve actually woken up at a relatively decent hour. Today is our annual lunch at Commander’s Palace with Jean and Gillian, which means very inexpensive martinis and all that entails. I also registered for Dallas Bouchercon yesterday and booked my hotel room. So much getting things done! I also worked on my technology issues yesterday–yes, they continue, Mojave is the stupidest thing Apple has ever done as an operating system–and have also been trying to update my phone, which doesn’t seem to be working. I really don’t want to have to get a new phone, but it seems as though this is what Apple is pushing me to do, which is infuriating.

But the desktop seems to be working the way it’s supposed to. Hmmm.

I read a lot of books last year, but I also judged for an award so I really can’t talk much  about any books that were actually released in 2018; which is unfortunate. I really enjoyed The Gates of Evangeline by Hester Young (for a book not published in 2018). I also read a lot of short stories. The Short Story Project was originally inspired, and intended, for me to read a lot of short stories and work as kind of a master class for me as far as writing short stories are concerned. As a project, I originally began it in 2017, but didn’t get very far with it. As a result, I decided to give it another try in 2018 and was much more successful with the project. Not only was I reading short stories, I wrote a lot of them. Some of those stories were actually sold; “This Town” to Murder-a-Go-Go’s, “The Silky Veils of Ardor” to The Beating of Black Wings, “Neighborhood Alert” to Mystery Tribune, “Cold Beer No Flies” to Florida Happens, and “A Whisper from the Graveyard” to another anthology whose name is escaping me at the moment. I also pulled together a collection of previously published and new stories, which will be released in April of 2019 but will be available for Saints and Sinners/Tennessee Williams Festival, Survivor’s Guilt and Other Stories. I also wrote another Scotty (I really need to finish revising it), which will also be out in the new year I think but I don’t have a release date yet. That was pretty productive, and I also managed eight chapters of a young adult novel, the current WIP.

Not bad, coming from someone who wrote practically nothing in 2017. So, on that score, I am taking 2018 as a writing win.

I also edited the Bouchercon anthology for the second time, Florida Happens, and read a shit ton of short stories for that as well. I was very pleased with how that book turned out, in all honesty, and it looks absolutely gorgeous.

I also published my first ever Kindle Single, “Quiet Desperation,” and also finally got the ebook for Bourbon Street Blues up for Kindle. At some point I do hope to have a print edition for sale as well, but I am happy to have the ebook available. I also have to finish proofing Jackson Square Jazz so I can get that ebook up as well.

So, writing and publishing wise, 2018 was a good comeback of sorts; I managed to get back into the swing of writing again, and started producing publishable work, which was absolutely lovely. I started to say I got my confidence back, but that wouldn’t be true; I’ve never had much self-confidence when it comes to  my writing. I also started writing in journals again in 2017, which was enormously helpful in 2018. (I actually went through my most recent one last night–the one I am currently using–and found a lot of stuff that I thought I’d lost in the Great Data Disaster of 2018; things I shall simply need to retype and of course will back-up immediately.

Yesterday, while electronic equipment repaired itself and made itself usable again–we’ll see how usable it is as the days go by–I watched two movies–The Omega Man and Cabaret on Prime, as well as the documentary Gods of Football (I highly recommend this one for eye candy potential; it’s about the shooting of a calendar in Australia to raise money for breast cancer charities, starring professional rugby players in the nude, and yes, the eye candy is delectable). I watched a lot of good movies and television shows over the course of the year–The Haunting of Hill House and Schitt’s Creek probably the best television shows–so it was a very good year for that. (I have some thoughts on both The Omega Man and Cabaret, but will save those for another post at another time.)

I also got my first New Orleans Public Library card this past year, and began reading New Orleans histories, which were endlessly fascinating, which led me into another project, Monsters of New Orleans, which is another short story collection about what the title says, crime stories based on real cases in New Orleans but fictionalized. And there are an incredible amount of them. I read the introduction to Robert Tallant’s Ready to Hang: Seven Famous Murder Cases in New Orleans, and while I am aware that Tallant’s scholarship is questionable (I figured that out reading Voodoo in New Orleans), his books are always gossipy, which makes them perfect for New Orleans reading. What is real, what is true, and what is not is always something one has to wonder when reading anything about New Orleans history; some of it is legend, which is to be expected, and unprovable; some of it is very real and can be verified. Some of the stories in this collection, which I am going to work on, off and on, around other projects, will inevitably be complete fictions; but others will be based on true stories and/or legends of the city, like the Sultan’s Palace and Madame LaLaurie and Marie Laveau. It’s an exciting project, and the more I read of New Orleans history the more inspiration I get, not only for this project but for other Scotty books as well…which is a good thing, I was leaning towards ending the series with Royal Street Reveillon, but now that I’m finding stories that will work and keep the series fresh…there just may be a few more Scotty novels left in me yet.

My goal of losing weight and getting into better physical condition lasted for only a few months, and didn’t survive Carnival season–it was too hard to get to the gym during the parades, and between all the walking, passing out condoms, and standing at the corner, I was simply too exhausted to make it to the gym, and thus never made it back to the gym. I began 2018 weighing 228 pounds, the heaviest I’ve ever been, and have managed, through diet and portion control, to slim down to a consistent plateau of 213. This is actually pretty decent progress; not what I would have wanted to report at the end of 2018, but I am going to take it and put it into the win column, and we’ll see how 2019 turns out.

The day job also had some enormous changes; we moved out of the Frenchmen Street office, after being there since 2000 (I started working there in 2005) and into a new building on Elysian Fields. This also caused some upheaval and change in my life–I’m not fond of change–and it wasn’t perhaps the smoothest transition. But I’m getting used to it, and making the necessary adjustments in my life.

Now we are on the cusp to a new year. Tomorrow, I’ll talk about new goals for the new year. It is, of course, silly; it’s just another day and in the overall scheme of things, a new year really doesn’t mean anything is actually new; but we use this as a measure of marking time, and new beginnings. I’ve always thought that was rather silly; any day is a new day and a new beginning; why be controlled by the tyranny of the calendar and the societally created fiction of the new year?

But it is also convenient. If you set new goals every new year, you then have a way of measuring success and failure as it pertains to those goals. I am not as black-and-white as I used to be with goals–which is why I use goals instead of resolutions, as there is also a societal expectation that resolutions are made in order to not succeed–and a goal is merely that, a goal, and not something that is fixed in stone. The endgame we all are playing with these goals and resolutions is to effect change in our lives and make them, in theory at least, better. So, any progress on a goal is a way of making your life better.

I didn’t get an agent this year; that was on my list of goals yet again. I am not certain what my own endgame with the agent hunt is; I need to come up with a book idea that is commercially viable for an agent to want to represent, and that isn’t easy. Most of my book-writing decisions were made, not with an eye toward the commercial, but with an eye toward I want to see if I can write this story. Was that the smartest path to take as a writer? Perhaps not. I don’t know what’s commercial. The manuscript I was using to try to get an agent never worked as a cohesive story for me, and in this past year I finally realized why; I was trying to make a story into something it wasn’t. If I ever write what I was calling the WIP but is in reality ‘the Kansas book’, I have to write it as I originally intended it, not as what I am trying to make it into. And that’s something that is going to have to go onto the goal list for 2019.

On that note, I am heading back into the spice mines. Have a happy New Year, everyone.

29dff057eaa0f35628338c6e0678c79f--book-boyfriends-new-years-eve

Let’s Get Rocked

How about dem Saints? Damn, they look like the Alabama of the NFL.

A long day in the car stretches before me. Just thinking about it makes me tired, oh so tired.

So don’t think about it, bitch.

In exciting news, I can now announce that my story, “Neighborhood Alert,” has sold to Mystery Tribune.

“Neighborhood Alert” was one of the stories I wrote in the flurry that was the first quarter (or first half?) of the year. I’d had the idea for a long time; the inspiration came to me one day when we were living back on Camp Street. I never used the front door of the apartment–or rarely, at any rate–because we had off-street parking and I usually came in through the apartment’s back door. But one morning when I was coming home from training a client I noticed there was a white piece of paper stuck in the mail slot in the front door. When I retrieved it, it was one of those sex offender notices–we are required by law to let you know a sex offender has moved into your neighborhood–and while I certainly understand why this is done…at the same time, there’s an element of continuing to punish the criminal after they’ve served their time about it that makes me a little squeamish.  But if I had a child I’d want to know, and if I were a woman I’d want to know. So, therein lies the intellectual and moral dilemma.

And, in the back of my head, I always wanted to write a story which opens with a character getting one of those notices on his/her front door. And vóila, at some point early in the year I wrote that story and started shopping it around.

And now, it has sold. How lovely is that?

I will talk about the story more when it is closer to seeing the light of day.

I’ve successfully managed to download A Game of Thrones to my phone, so hopefully I’ll have that for listening as I drive north, and I’ll decide if audiobooks are indeed something I can make a part of my reading life going forward. I’ve added the Duolingo app to my iPad so I can continue with my Italian lessons–some of the words are starting to stick with me, but being able to hear and identify the words isn’t going quite as well.

I also read “The Nature of My Inheritance” by Bradford Morrow, from Bibliomysteries Volume Two, edited by Otto Penzler:

In the wake of my father’s death, my inheritance of over half a hundred Bibles offered me no solace whatsoever, but instead served to remind me what a godless son I was and had always been. Like the contrarian children of police officers who are sometimes driven to a life of crime, and professors’ kids who become carefree dropouts, my  father’s devotion to his ministry might well have been the impetus behind my early secret embrace of atheism. In church, listening to his Sunday sermons, as I sat in a pew with my mother near the back of the sanctuary, I nodded approvingly along with the rest of the congregation when he hit upon this particularly poignant scriptural point or that. But in all honesty, my mind was a thousand light years away, wallowing, at least usually, in smutty thoughts. His last day in the pulpit, his last day on earth, was no different. I cannot recall with precision what lewd scenario I was playing out in my head, but no doubt my juvenile pornography, the witless daydream of a virgin, did not make a pretty counterpoint with my father’s homily.

One of the fun things about reading anthologies is discovering new writers, or rather, new-to-me writers. I’d not read Morrow before, but I’ve added him to my list of writers whose canon should be explored. This story is interesting and goes places I certainly never imagined; and the voice of the young man who is telling the story–a slightly amoral young man whose father’s devotion hid a lot of secrets, which his son will slowly uncover, is exceptional. The story could have just as easily been called something like “Lessons My Father Taught Me” or something like that; but this title is just fine–it doesn’t give anything away, and it’s truly a wonderful, fun story. I was very pleased with it.

Once I get caffeinated and clean the kitchen, I’m hitting the road.

IMG_4383