Tag: novellas

Respect Yourself

Saturday, and a big day for one Gregalicious.

I have some things to do this morning before I am interviewed around noon for a radio show, after which it’s errands, including the (groan) grocery store. It’s only for a few things, so it shouldn’t be too hideous….yet it is going to be hideous. Sigh. But then I am spending the afternoon watching the Iron Bowl and tonight’s LSU game. Will the Tigers manage an undefeated regular season? We’ll find out tonight.

It’s going to be weird going back to work–these unstructured, do-what-you-want-when-you-want days have been kind of lovely, and addicting. I don’t have any regrets about the things I didn’t get done, either. I went into this week without making a to-do list, and primarily rested, physically, mentally and emotionally.  I’m very happy that I chose to do this, and rested rather than drove myself insane trying to get things done, or playing catch-up. I didn’t do as much cleaning and organizing as I thought I would, but that’s just how the week managed to play itself out. My kitchen is a mess this morning, so I need to get that all straightened up and cleaned, and there’s some laundry to fluff and fold. I also have to pay the bills this morning–another odious chore–but one that cannot be avoided any longer.

There’s also no Saints game tomorrow–so if I want, I can get a lot done tomorrow–whether writing, reading, or cleaning.

Last night I stumbled onto a documentary series on the National Geographic channel about the 1980’s; I’d already watched the CNN docuseries, The 80’s, and tremendously enjoyed it, so as I was killing some time before Paul got home, I settled in and started watching. I’m not much for nostalgia, really; I don’t spend a lot of time looking back on my past or the events of my life too frequently. The past is the past, and while one can learn from it, after all, one certainly can’t change anything that happened in the past. But watching these docuseries is a kind of reminder; and this series was called The Decade That Made Us, which I thought was an interesting take. A lot of stuff that started in the 1980’s, naturally, is bearing fruit today–cell phones, personal computers, etc.–and of course, it’s always difficult to watch and remember the 80’s in terms of HIV/AIDS–you simply cannot do a docuseries about the 1980’s and not mention HIV/AIDS, or remember that it wasn’t, really, that long ago. (Sure, it’s getting further and further into the past with each day, but still–1980 was forty years ago; in 1980 the second world war was only forty years in the past.)

But one of the novellas in progress I am writing, “Never Kiss a Stranger,” is set in the not too distant past; 1994, to be exact. I’ve always written, for the most part, in the ambiguous present, with a few exceptions (“The Weight of a Feather” is one; it’s set in the early 1950’s), and it can be a bit difficult at times to remember, no he wouldn’t have had a computer or cell phone and trying to remember how we functioned without instant, immediate access to each other. (There was a really funny part in the docuseries last night where someone basically said that–“how did we meet up before cell phones? We made plans, days in advance, and included directions like “meet me under the clock at Grand Central at 4″…I had forgotten, or rather just not thought about, that….) It’s interesting trying to remember what 1994 was like, who I was back then and what was going on in the world. My main character is a  gay man who has just retired from the military, having found out he was about to be purged as a gay (gays in the military was a political battle the Clinton administration was fighting back then; “don’t ask don’t tell” was the disgraceful compromise that came out of that fight–but it was, pathetic as it was, better than the previous system, which was dishonorable discharges.) and, with no family left that he’s close to, decides to come to New Orleans to start a new chapter of his life as an openly gay man at thirty-nine, and what that experience is like. There’s some element of crime and suspense to the story, but it’s really about that feeling of liberation when you’re finally free to be yourself, while still living in the shadow of HIV/AIDS. I love the idea of this story, and am having fun writing it, remembering what New Orleans was like back then, and what it was like to be gay in New Orleans at that time, as well.

I may never do anything with it, but I’m having fun writing it, and that’s really the most important thing.

I am seriously considering doing a collection of novellas, like Stephen King’s Different Seasons, but am not sure if there’s a market or an audience for it. I already know what the next novella would be, and then all I need to do is come up with two more.

Heavy sigh. Like it’s that easy, right?

Ah, well. And now back to the spice mines.

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Space Oddity

So, the eighth Scotty book drops in exactly one week. Those of you who preordered (and thank you!) might even already have Royal Street Reveillon in your hot little hands. Yay, for preorders, and thank you again if you did preorder.

Those of you who have been reading my blog for a long time, or follow me on social media, or do any of those lovely things that make me feel better about myself, are probably aware of one of my primary mantras of writing: never throw anything away because nothing you write is waste. It can, after all, always come in handy later. I’ve repurposed work before; Murder in the Rue Ursulines, the fourth Chanse novel, began life as the fourth Scotty, Hurricane Party Hustle. My short story “Survivor’s Guilt,” nominated for a Macavity Award, began life as a short story called “Blues in the Night,” and so on, and so on, and so on. Fragments removed from a novel have ended up in a short story; short story pieces have wound up inside novels. That’s why I always save everything, including drafts and partials–I never know when that writing might come in handy for something later, and it inevitably always does.

Many years ago, the publishing of fiction as ebooks only exploded with the development, and sales, of Amazon’s Kindle device, as well as those from competitors–I chose to go the iPad route, and use the apps for book reading; Kobo and Kindle and iBooks. A friend had started her own e-publishing company, and was encouraging me to develop a long-dormant idea for a series–the idea I had, almost from the earliest days of the Chanse series, of spinning off his reporter best bud, Paige Tourneur, into her own series. I am always willing to give new things, and new technology, a spin, and so I produced two lengthy novellas with Paige as a main character, out of a proposed five: Fashion Victim and Dead Housewives of New Orleans. The former was originally a short story I sat on for years; the latter an idea born of my interest/borderline obsession with reality television, primarily Bravo’s Real Housewives franchises. It was born of a joke between Paul and I, while he suffered in silence through my watching of these shows (mostly the New York and Beverly Hills editions; I never got into the others quite as much, although Atlanta and now Potomac I”m more hit and miss with) in which we picked women we thought would make interesting choices for a New Orleans franchise, and then would simply laugh and laugh, saying “Can you imagine?” The novellas, however, were on a very tight turn around time, and I was writing them between other novels I had contracted. They were good, but I was never completely satisfied with them, and Paige was, frankly, not as popular with readers as I thought she might be. People either loved the character or hated her; and of course, some Amazon reviewers disliked Paige’s feminist politics and her habit of using foul language.

Also, as it turned out, ebook marketing is a lot of work–work I didn’t have the time or knowledge to put in, and ultimately the return on the investment was simply not worth it. My friend and I agreed to cancel the series and the contracts, and shortly thereafter both novellas were pulled from Amazon.

And that, I thought, was the end of the great Paige experiment of mainstream crime fiction writing for me.

But I still believed, and still do, that the Dead Housewives idea was a good one, and deserved better than it got as an e-novella for Paige.

So…I decided to reboot and repurpose the idea, and develop it into a Scotty novel; and so a forty thousand word novella turned into a Scotty novel of closer to a hundred thousand words; it’s the longest Scotty book since Jackson Square Jazz. If you are an avid Greg reader, and you read Dead Housewives (thank you for that, by the way), some of Royal Street Reveillon might seem familiar; the opening party for the show, some of the characters and their relationships to each other, and so on. But the outcome of the story is different, and there’s a lot more going on in this book than in the original. Royal Street Reveillon is much closer to what I always wanted the story to be, and really, it works much better as a Scotty story than it ever would did as a Paige story. The “Grande Dames of New Orleans” are all the same women; I introduced Serena Castlemaine in Garden District Gothic, and also previewed the filming of the reality show in that book. Margery, Megan, Rebecca, Fidelis, and Chloe are the same women from the original, but their stories and relationships to each other (and in some cases, to their spouses and the men in their lives) are dramatically different. The first murder is different, and there are several more story threads in this final version of the story than there were before. And there is a lot more of Scotty’s personal story, and that of those he loves, in this book than in the original (obviously, as Scotty wasn’t in the original story).

And, for the record, the resolution of the mysteries (yes, plural) are markedly different than what it originally was.

Also for the record;  I am much more pleased with this book than I was with the original story. I hope you’ll like it, too.

I spent my entire Labor Day, well, laboring over a volunteer project; it’s still not quite finished despite the eight or so hours I dedicated to it yesterday, but I feel very confident that it will be finished tonight. So, while I didn’t really get to spend my long weekend relaxing as much as I would have liked, I was able to get some things done, including the draft of Bury Me in Shadows, this volunteer project, and I did sign the contract for that short story, which was lovely.

And so now on to a short week. I don’t have a short day this week until Friday, as I am covering for someone tomorrow evening, but that’s fine. I seem to have my sleep back under control again as well, which is a major plus and very satisfying.

So it’s off to the spice mines with me for the day. Have a lovely day, Constant Reader.

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