Tag: Passenger to Franklin

I’ve Had It

Yesterday wasn’t the best. Oh, nothing bad happened, it was a kind of meh day. I felt mentally refreshed but physically tired when I got up, and as the day went on the tiredness of my body seeped into my brain and my creativity. By the time I got home from work, I was too tired to do much of anything creative. I put away dishes and did another load as well as finished a load of laundry, and dozed off in my easy chair for about an hour before Paul got home. The nap didn’t really help, but I did sleep super well last night and feel rested all over this morning. This is a good thing, as it’s Pay-the-Bills Wednesday again, and today I am going to try to finish my taxes and get them off to my accountant.

So, yesterday was kind of a wash for me. I didn’t try to force anything, mainly because I didn’t have the will or the need. This morning I am feeling good and awake and my mind is already bouncing all over the place. Since getting up this morning I’ve come across an interesting news story that could tie into a fun Scotty book, have had some thoughts about my next book to write, and more ideas about how to make “When I Die” better. See, this sort of thing can’t be forced; I can make myself write but if my mind isn’t feeling creative and bouncing all over the place, it’s absolute torture that needs to be completely revised from the first word to the last. The rewrite of “When I Die,” for example, is going to be an almost totally word for word revision; the concept and setting are there, but the characters need to be changed and more depth added to the new ones that wasn’t there in the first draft, and that pleases me. I am also extremely pleased with “Passenger to Franklin.” I do need to polish it some more, of course, and make it prettier and tighten up the ending a bit–it seems abrupt to me, but I could be wrong. But I feel pretty good this morning, so here’s hoping for a nice, successful day without stress and/or irritations or aggravation. I will make groceries on the way home and swing by the mail, and hopefully Paul will be home early enough for us to watch another episode of Vigil.

I was talking to another writer friend last night about the business and it provided me with some definite food for thought about my future. I was already thinking about trying something different–I feel like I’ve gotten a bit stagnant with my work, and so I need to start pushing boundaries and trying some different things. I think I definitely want to try writing a gay romance novel, something I’ve thought about for quite some time, and I may try to branch out in other ways. I still definitely want to get these books on my list to get out of the way done, but I like the idea of writing a romance and stretching that way. I was even pondering the possibility of rebooting the Chanse series, but not using the same pattern of titles. I like the idea of revisiting him and seeing where he is now–is he any wiser or happier? But I don’t know. It doesn’t feel like going backwards–always a concern–and I also think it would be far more of a challenge to write a Chanse book now than it was ten years ago when I ended the series originally.

The release of the French Quarter Stabber on parole also had me going down some wormholes yesterday between clients. The French Quarter Stabber was a teenager who murdered three or four gay men in the 1970s; there was some serious homophobia and undoubtedly some self-loathing involved there. I think it would make for an interesting exploration of who he was in fiction, but it might also make an interesting true crime novel–something I’ve never really considered doing, but it could be a fun project to research and work on between other projects–particularly how these murders were handled by the local press and police in the same decade that saw the Upstairs Lounge fire/mass murder, and how that did or did not change in the few intervening years.

And again, suburbanites and North Shore racists: remind me of precisely when New Orleans was the idyllic crime free city? Because my brief researches into the past show a city that was always a hotbed of crime.

Anyway, the Stabber’s story will easily fit into a project I already have in progress that just needs a lot of revision and rework, but I love being able to pull this new research into a project where it will fit snugly and perfectly. Yay! Obviously, I am feeling a lot better about things this morning than I did yesterday. I wasn’t down or depressed or anything yesterday, but it was a low energy day which had a lot to do with my blood sugar, something I’ve been trying to be better about. When I don’t eat, my blood sugar drops and I don’t have any energy. I don’t think this means that I am pre-diabetic or anything, but just another thing about getting older I need to pay more attention to than I have before. Sigh. It never ends.

But today I feel like my life is very much the art of the possible this morning, and I am going to ride that wave like a surfer on Oahu’s north shore. So…I should probably head into the spice mines and start paying some bills. Have a lovely Wednesday, and I will most likely be back later.

Tell Him No

I did get tired yesterday afternoon, but I think it was more from malnutrition somehow than anything else. My breakfast and my lunch did not fill me up1, and after I had lunch I did feel like my batteries were starting to run down a bit. It was, all in all, a good day for the most part. I did make it through the workday. I ran errands after work (got some things for Sparky from Chewy, and the last batch of new shirts arrived); started organizing the draft blog posts to determine which can be combined (same topic started on different days, months, years) and which can be finished and which can be deleted; I finished the revision of “Passenger to Franklin” (and I think it’s much much better now); and started getting my (delayed and extended) taxes together. Ideally, I can get that done this week and to my accountant by Friday so that will be one thing more that’s been hanging over my head like the sword of Damocles out of the way. Huzzah! I also took a look at “When I Die,” and while this one is going to take a lot of fucking work, it’ll be so much better when I finish it!

I slept well last night, and my coffee is rather delicious this morning. It was cold yesterday morning when I left for work–surprisingly so–but it warmed during the day so my car was very hot when I got into it after work. It’s going to get warmer consistently later in the week–I still can’t get over it being eighty-eight last Friday, it’s only April for Pete’s sake–which means it’ll probably be hot and sunny as I visit graveyards with Dad the weekend after next. I was thinking last night, as we watched Vigil (it’s terrific, highly recommended), that I’m almost in a good place again for the first time in almost ten years or so. My stress levels are way down, my moods generally are good and even, and I don’t have flashes of anger anymore (mostly while in my car). Other idiot drivers are still annoying, but don’t send me into a rage anymore. Now, it’s more like I get annoyed, say very calmly, “yes, you’re an asshole who can’t drive” or “yes, you are so much more important than all the rest of us”, but as I said, it’s calm–and I can absolutely live with that.

I got a short story rejection email yesterday, and I was completely ambivalent about it. The problem is you’re never sure if the story just doesn’t work for them or if the fact that the main character is gay was a problem for them. Sure, the rejection had the standard form please submit to us again, but…yeah, not so much. This is what straight white cisgender people don’t get, with all their whining about “merit”–the only people who they think actually earn their careers are straight white cisgender people, after all–because you can never be certain that it’s the story that they didn’t like enough or whether homophobic concerns come into play: our readers might get mad at is if we shove queer down their throats or we don’t want to become known as the queer crime publication and every other iteration of that you can imagine…any excuse not to publish a queer writer. Many years ago, I decided that I would never allow suspicions of homophobia affect my writing career, and I would always assume it was the story that was the problem. But…you have to wonder. When a magazine only buys your work when you send them things with straight main characters (twice) but rejects everything with a gay main character or even a gay theme, you have to start to wonder.

And given how few of the magazines that actually pay well for short stories (or pay at all) there are and how little queer work they actually publish…you begin to wonder. You don’t want to believe it’s homophobia or homophobic concerns, but here we are, you know. The stories I am working on now aren’t really crime stories, they’re more supernatural/horror stories, but I do think “The Last To See Him Alive” is not only a good story but it’s written really well. I need to revise it and edit it, of course, but it’s in really good shape already which is pleasing. “When I Die” needs a complete overhaul, but that’s fine. It’ll be a better story for it when it’s finished. And while these stories I am working on could complete the collection, this morning I am wondering if I should include horror in this book or not.

I really do not understand these new state laws (here in Louisiana we got one, too) allowing people to drive their cars into protestors, something which inbred morons Tom Cotton of Arkansas and eternal bitchboy Josh Hawley of Missouri are all about. Nothing says leadership like telling people to kill or injure other people. As always, these kind of Nazi-lite fascistic laws come to you courtesy of the Republican Party and MAGAt. I personally am looking forward to driving my car into a crowd of Trump protestors and hitting the gas pedal, frankly. When I saw this on social media yesterday, I responded with Never thought I’d see the day when the Kent State massacre would have fanboys, which prompted some responses which, of course, made the most sense: they had them at the time. I was too young to remember the right-wing response to the Kent State shootings, I just remember being appalled that the National Guard murdered four students on a campus, and I have always viewed it as a disgrace and a tragedy…but of course the right did not see it that way–just as they backed William Calley as a hero after the My Lai massacre in Vietnam. Even I–who have always known how vile and unpatriotic the right in this country is and always has been–didn’t think they were that callous and awful.

They are, they always have been, and they always will be.

The thing that always amuses me about this is the “patriots” of the right always forget that the only reason we exist as a country was because of mass protests….which led to a revolution. So, by that way of thinking, the most patriotic thing you can ever do is protest, really. Remember the Tea Party, the seeds that grew into MAGA? Remember the stolen election of 2000? Remember how Reagan dismantled and changed (and ruined) Social Security? The only reason there’s an issue with it now is because of Reagan, St Ronnie of the Right. The Republicans are the party of Joe McCarthy, Richard Nixon, Ronald Reagan, Henry Kissinger, and people like Cotton, Marjorie Taylor Greene, Josh Hawley, and Matt Gaetz are their heirs.

Remember back when I was thinking about starting to read and study poetry? I got a great recommendation from a dear friend at S&S of where to start–Mary Oliver’s Why I Wake Early–and I’ve been paging through it randomly, reading poems here and there, glimpsing fragments, and I think I’m slowly starting to come to an understanding of poetry I never had before. I am not going to review poetry on here as I am nowhere near knowledgeable enough and I don’t want to make a fool out of myself self-teaching and coming to what regular readers of poetry already understand from studying it. It’s a wonderful education, and one I kind of wish I had started earlier. Ah, well.

I also decided to postpone reading the Paul Tremblay and take it with me to Kentucky to read. Instead, I’ve decided to reread a book I don’t remember much of–Suicide Notes by Michael Thomas Ford. He published a sequel this past year that I would love to read, but not remembering the first one was a problem, so I decided to go ahead and reread it. I don’t talk about Ford much, but he really is one of the most underrated queer writers of our time. He can basically write anything (a blessing and a curse, as I know all too well), and he does it extremely well. Rereading the first chapter last night pulled me back into the story effortlessly, and the voice is so compelling and hauntingly real…and likable. I’m looking forward to reading more of it.

And on that note, I am heading into the spice mines. Have a lovely Tuesday, Constant Reader, and I’ll probably be back later.

  1. I also ate dinner late on Sunday night, which I usually don’t do and am sure that had something to do with it, but given I don’t really get hungry all that often it was kind of cool. ↩︎

Enchanted

Sunday morning! And LSU Gymnastics won the national championship yesterday! Woo-hoo! That accomplishment is worthy of its own post, so tune in later for that, okay? It was very exciting, I have to say, and the Lost Apartment was filled with excited cheers even as we held our breath as LSU clinched it all with a fantastic final rotation on balance beam. We kind of celebrated this throughout the night by watching replays and highlights before episode two of Sugar, which I am loving. Colin Ferrell, yum.

I was very tired Friday from running all those errands, and so was Paul. I was still fatigued yesterday, the physical and mental kind that I’ve not felt in a while–but sadly more evidence that my stamina is not back and needs to be worked on. The heat is also back; yesterday was pleasant, but Friday was eighty-eight degrees…in April. That doesn’t bode well for the summer, especially for one that’s going to be a more active hurricane season. But while I was so tired yesterday I managed to use what little nervous energy I had to clean and organize, and the apartment actually looks better this morning. It’s still not up to par–I need to do the floors to get there–but it’s nice to walk down to a neater first floor. I do need to run the dishwasher this morning, and finish filing before I read and write for the day. I do feel a little dragged out this morning, but hopefully getting caffeinated and cleaned up will take care of that problem.

I did do some things writing-related yesterday. I found the epigraphs for the next Scotty book, for one, and also wrote the opening of The Crooked Y in my head yesterday as I cleaned and organized. I created some working folders for projects that are forming in my head, and I did write notes down in my journal occasionally. I also did some electronic file cleaning up, which is proving to be an endless, endless process that may never be finished. But as long as I can still search for everything in a finder window, it should be okay. I also thought of how to open The Summer of Lost Boys, too. I’ve been listening to the Billboard Top 100’s for the years I am considering setting the book in, and I think I am settling into 1974, which was when I originally wanted it set in the first place, the summer (in my life) between junior high and high school. It’s kind of fun, if a little painful, to go back to that time and remember it for myself, but I think it’s going to be a really strong book once it’s underway. I also started getting the current book a bit better organized. I feel better about things, if that makes any sense? Hopefully I’ll be able to get a lot of writing done. I want to finish the rewrite of “Passenger to Franklin” and start the revision of “When I Die,” before diving into the book headfirst and trying to get the rest of it plotted.

I think I’ve been a bit overwhelmed lately, in all honesty, and I need to get calmed down and focused again. I need to remember how to harness my brain ADHD-driven creativity and focus on one thing the way I used to be able to do so. I have been very pleased with the (sparse) writing I’ve been doing, but I also think that might be partly due to the stamina issues I’ve been having since the surgery. I am trying to rush to get back to “normal” (or what passes for it around here) and getting ahead of myself, and I need to reign in my impatience and take things slower. It’s okay because it’s temporary, and this too shall pass. Take a breath, remember you had a rough go of things last year, and you have to build everything back to the point it was before the injury.

I’ve also been remiss in not congratulating award winners lately in my field; I am very pleased to report that J. M. Redmann won the Hansen Prize for queer crime fiction for Transitory, which is now also a Lambda finalist AND a two category Goldie finalist. Yay Jean! I’ve known Jean for almost twenty-five years now, she was my boss’s boss for about eighteen years, we’ve co-edited anthologies together, and now I am her book editor. Transitory is a terrific book, and being Jean’s editor is pretty easy, actually. Ivy Pochoda recently won the Los Angeles Times Book Award for Best Crime Novel for Sing Her Down, and Ivy is pretty awesome, too. I am behind on her books (I’m behind on everyone’s books, really) but her Wonder Valley was fan-fucking-tastic. Way to go, Ivy! (That was a loaded category, too–other nominees were S. A. Cosby, Cheryl Head, Jordan Harper, and Lou Berney.)

And on that note, I am going to head into the spice mines, eat something and get cleaned up and ready to go for this glorious morning. Have a lovely Sunday, Constant Reader, and I will chat at you again later.

Poison Ivy

Work-at-home Friday! I got up early this morning for some reason, but it was an hour later than usual so I will count it as “sleeping in.” I have a lot of stuff to get done for work duties today, which I want to wrap up so I can get all the errands taken care of. I have prescriptions to pick up, groceries to make, a trip to Costco–I get exhausted just thinking about it. But yesterday was really a good day, wasn’t it? I’m not sure how it was for you, but I was productive and in a really good mood for most of the day. I was a bit tired at times during the day, but I made it through, picked up the mail (a package of new shirts arrived!), and then came home. Sparky was rambunctious and so had to cart him around on my shoulders while I did some things, and then he parked on the desk while I wrote for a while. I also talked to one of my co-workers who drives for Uber/Lyft, because I wanted to be sure I was getting how it all worked right in a short story I am working on and revising, “Passenger to Franklin.” I was also pleased that the story wasn’t the piece of trash I convinced myself it was when I was writing the first draft, and I was pretty happy to see that despite my usual self-deprecation mentality (which I am really working on, I promise) it wasn’t bad at all–and there are some really good images and sentences in it. After all my running around today, if I have time I am going to write some more tonight, and hopefully finish this second draft.

LSU Gymnastics was in the first session of the national championship meet, and they scored over 198 and qualified first overall into the finals Saturday afternoon. I would be excited regardless, but it’s even more exciting this year, because if they hit they could finally win it all this year. I was waiting for Paul to get home and had stopped writing to settle into my easy chair, and remembered, oh, I wonder if we can catch a replay of LSU on ESPN? So I turned on the television and navigated into the ESPN app, and thought, oh, I don’t care about the second session, but I can watch for a while until Paul gets home. So I did just that and turned it on just in time to see Oklahoma’s first vaulter sit down on the landing. Oklahoma was undefeated and ranked number 1; Ragan Smith, one of their stars, has spent a good potion of the year making TikToks claiming LSU’s routines were over-scored, which is not only unsportsmanlike but a total bitch move (I am not a fan of that kind of shit, especially since you’re daring karma,Alabama and hubris is not something the gods like). They sat down two more vaults, and two others weren’t great, pushing them so far down they couldn’t climb back, which was shocking. They had two more falls off the beam, so had to count a fall there. This is NOT what you expect watching Oklahoma, and Paul got home right after that first vault, and the evening session was like a trainwreck you couldn’t stop looking at. It rained Alabama gymnasts around the balance beam–I think four of them came off–and even other teams were having falls they didn’t have to count. When the bloodbath was over, Utah and Florida moved onto the finals to join LSU and California. I am very excited to watch Saturday afternoon!

Last night was also a lovely evening because Paul and I were both relaxed, rested, and in a pretty good mood, so we were laughing and joking and having a great time. It’s been way too long since we’ve had an evening like that, and I was actually reluctant to go to bed and end the evening (I still hate ending a good time, and I don’t think that will change until I am in the crematorium), but it held over until this morning, too, which was unexpected and a delight at the same time. I feel good this morning, despite only sleeping in for an extra hour, and confident and like myself again for the first time in a really long time (I know, I say that all the time, but having fun with Paul has been missing from my Bingo card for far too long), but I don’t really think I’ve been myself for almost ten years or so. Mom had her first stroke and we almost lost her the first time in 2016 around Christmas, and that’s been weighing on my mind subconsciously I think ever since until last year when we finally did lose her. The pandemic, volunteering, getting COVID myself, Mom dying, my surgeries–it’s been quite a ride and while I am not certain I am completely coming out from under it all, I am feeling somewhat better and I hope it lasts.

I also came across another interesting bit of Kansas corruption and crime yesterday, in which a corrupt district attorney (now a federal prosecutor), in tandem with a police chief and a judge, were closing cases by not sharing evidence, forcing people to testify against innocent people by threatening to send them to jail, and on and on it goes. You can read about this vile racist piece of shit here.

Seriously, so much crime in Kansas.

I also typed up some notes for the new Kansas book (it feels weird to be saying that since it was what I called #shedeservedit for years), and I also started bringing together some things for the next Scotty book. See? I am being productive again. Maybe that’s why I am feeling so good? Probably. I always am in a better place when I’m writing, and without any other things weighing me down, I am really loving life lately, you know?

And on that note, I am going to start doing some day-job stuff by heading down into the spice mines. Have a lovely Friday, Constant Reader, and I will check in with you again later (have you noticed I’m posting a lot lately? Trying to clear out those unfinished drafts).

At the risk of sounding crude, this wrestler has an amazing ass, does he not?

Only You (And You Alone)

Ah, Thursday and my last day in the office for the week. Awesome. Yesterday morning I once again did the old “don’t leave the house until 7:30” again, and once again I wasn’t groggy or tired by the time I left the house. Bizarre how that minor shift in how my days are structured has created such a significant change to everything. I really need to remember to pay attention to routines before they become ruts, so I can change them and avoid said rut.

I did finish the first draft of a short story Tuesday night, and I am most pleased with it. I am writing it for an open call for an anthology, and I am very pleased that I got a first draft done long before the deadline. (I’m still bitter about missing the Chessies anthology deadline, for which I was working on three stories. Note to self: never write three stories for a submissions call because you think it sounds like a great idea. It is not, nor is it ever, a good idea.) Yay, me! I also decided to work on revisions of some other stories in progress; I am still struggling working on this book, but I’ve also decided I need to really immerse myself in it for at least one day so I can get a handle on this plot and figure out where it’s going and what needs to come in and what needs to come in so that I really feel like I have a grasp on the characters and the story. Those stories in progress are the first drafts I never got a chance to revise for the Chessie anthology, and all three will fit snugly into the end of my short story collection…so technically, if I can get the three stories whipped into shape, I can also go ahead and get the collection turned in. Huzzah! All three of the stories are actually ghost stories of a sort; “Passenger to Franklin” needs some serious revision, and so does “When I Die,” which is a terrific concept and really needs some work too. I think I can get one of my oldest and most beloved stories of my own whipped into shape and added into this collection as well, which just goes to show–never discard an idea or throw out a story because you’ll eventually come back to it someday.

I wrote out the opening paragraphs of the next Scotty, which I want to write this fall and hopefully get turned in around November or December. I am pretty pleased with the plot and story of this one, too, but I also need to spend some time brainstorming the plot and how it twists and turns around and turns out. I still haven’t dipped into my Paul Tremblay yet, and I think I may save it for Sunday morning reading over my coffee. Saturday morning I am going to reread/skim Death Drop so I can get a better feel for the current WIP and make sure I have the voice right, which I don’t think I do yet, which is also why I think I am having so much trouble writing it. It’s always a struggle for me to write a book when I don’t hear the voice of the character in my head, so I need to get it there ASAP.

I feel like I am making progress with my writing, even if working on the book is like pulling recalcitrant teeth.

I feel pretty good this morning, a little tired perhaps, which is oddly different that the past few weeks, when I was tired earlier in the week and felt more rested as the week progressed. This of course made no damned sense at all, but that’s okay. Few things in my life have ever made sense, and a lot of it probably is related to the anxiety and medications, as well as this week’s change in schedule. Last night when Paul got home we watched the first episode of The Sympathizer, which was very intense. I loved the book, and the new series is actually quite excellent–but more on that as it develops, obviously. I also managed to fold the laundry and do a load of dishes. I also picked up two new books, the new Scott Carson (aka Michael Koryta) and the new Alyssa Cole. I want to get some serious reading done this weekend as well as some cleaning and writing, and I also need to get my taxes completed this weekend and off to my accountant. An odious chore, to be sure, but a necessary one. I also have a lot of errands to do this weekend–we need to go to Costco, I need to make groceries, and of course there’s a shit ton of cleaning that needs to be done. I will need to work on reorganizing the freezer/refrigerator tonight in order to make sure there’s room for what we pick up this weekend.

And on that note, I am heading into the spice mines. Have a lovely Friday Eve, Constant Reader, and one never knows, I could be back later.

My Happiness

Tuesday and feeling a bit better after the wasted weekend (I wasn’t wasted, but rather wasted the weekend; but I need to stop looking at it that way and realize both my body and my brain wanted, and needed, rest). I wrote another chapter last night and am back into the book; here’s hoping it will last and I’ll keep writing as more time passes. The work wasn’t great, but it’s done and it’s fixable. This weekend I am going to have to really dive into things for sure, and I am hoping this week I’ll be able to keep up with the kitchen and everything else so I don’t have to spend a lot of time doing that this weekend and instead can dive headfirst into writing and reading.

I stopped to pick up a few things on the way home from the grocery store last night, and then once I was home I emptied the dishwasher, bonded with Sparky a bit, and then sat down to work. Sparky wasn’t especially fond of this idea–he’s not fond of anything I do that doesn’t involve either providing a lap for him to sleep in, filling his food bowl, or playing with him. I do think we’re going to have to make a Costco run this weekend at some point–we’re running low on some things–and there are some other things I need to order for delivery this weekend, too.

But I am happy I am writing again. I’m sorry I didn’t have the time or energy to edit “Passenger to Franklin,” which I was writing for the Chessies chapter’s next anthology; but it wasn’t ready to be submitted and had I done so, it would have been rejected anyway. The nice thing is this anthology–themed around urban legends–provided two short stories for me–“When I Die” and this one; both of which need editing, and both of which I think are going to be terrific stories and perfect for my collection, too. I have found the voice for “Passenger,” which was missing in the first draft, and “When I Die” needs to be revised so I can make the main character gay; it works better that way, especially with an unrequited crush on his wealthier roommate. I like the idea of them visiting the graveyard at Frenier as kind of a fraternity prank; the rich roommate thinks it might be a fun thing to do to all the pledges, and the one they take out with them into the Manchac Swamp is a pledge who looks up to both of them, in a smarmy way the main character doesn’t necessarily like–and we see a personality change come over him as they cruise through the swamp at night. (I also need to look up boats, and sometime I have to drive out to Laplace so I can take the old highway and see what that’s like so I can write about it some more. The college and town I am writing about on the North Shore is fictional, of course; but Frenier and the swamp are real.

And both legalizing cannabis and protecting abortion are now on the ballot in Florida, which makes me absolutely giddy with joy. This is very good news for the Democratic Party and really bad news for trash like DeSantis and that ghoul Rick Scott; I would hope it means a huge turnout which always is bad news for Republicans–that’s why they are always screaming about “voter fraud” and trying to suppress people’s right to vote; free and open elections generally aren’t good for Fascists.

After I got my word count for the day, Paul and I settled in and started watching Apples Never Fall, which we are really enjoying. It’s based on a book by Liane Moriarty (also the author of Big Little Lies and a few others; I’ve enjoyed everything of hers that I’ve read thus far) and I like how this is playing out so far. It’s so nice having Paul home in the evenings again–I’d forgotten how much I just enjoy our down time together in the evenings.

And on that note, I am heading into the spice mines. Have a lovely Tuesday, Constant Reader, and I may be back again later; one never knows.

Stagger Lee

Thursday last morning in the office this week blog. I get to go in a little later because I have to stay until five tonight; and of course tomorrow morning I have PT at the ungodly hour of seven a.m. Gah. But it’s okay, really. I slept super well last night–probably the best night’s sleep of the week–and I finally got my keyboard for the iPad yesterday: huzzah! It works beautifully, too…which is the last excuse I had for not getting any writing done (or as much as I would like). Now I have a functional laptop and a functional iPad for writing anywhere in the house, which is kind of fun. I can get my iPad in the morning and write in bed if I want, or I can take the laptop up there, or…so many plethoras of options, and NO MORE EXCUSES.

Oh, I’ll still make excuses, of course, to get out of doing the day’s writing. And I did do some yesterday–I wrote about seven hundred or so words on “Passenger to Franklin” (an Agatha Christie title homage that really pleases me far more than it probably should)–but very little of anything else other than watching Part II of The Real Housewives of Beverly Hills reunion (Kyle Richards remains a disgusting piece of shit bitch who doesn’t need to be on my television screen anymore). I then spent the rest of the evening watching the news (or clips from the news) and despairing further about the future of the country and grateful again that I am old. It’s about the only benefit to being old, really, and not having children: the future isn’t really my problem, but at the same time, I also don’t want the adults of the future to have to deal with a destroyed and/or increasingly hostile and damaged planet, either, because I am not a monster. Sometimes I think I worry about the future more than people who actually do have kids, or are young.

I watched a really interesting conversation between Rachel Maddow and Nicolle Wallace last night–and they were both right: the Republican Party of today wants to eliminate our democracy and set up an authoritarian state where they are always in charge and they can get rid of everyone they don’t like. Sound familiar? See Berlin, 1933. It’s scary to contemplate, and even scarier to realize The Handmaid’s Tale was actually very prescient. I became worried about authoritarianism coming to the US during the Reagan years and what followed, when the Republican party became convinced that they had a divine right and mandate to always be in power. As I watched people get subsumed by Fox Propaganda in the 1990s (when the character assassination of Hilary Clinton truly began), I saw it for what it was: definitely not a news organization, and it’s partisan nature had everything to do with the rollback on rules about what is and isn’t news…during the Reagan administration. It’s astonishing how little people think about the recent past, or even try to put the present in the context of the recent past.

Let alone thinking about the older history, which no one knows1. Then again, I am from a part of the country that proudly claims hatred and bigotry as their heritage, so maybe knowing history might not help as much as I would like to believe.

Heavy heaving sigh.

Those who don’t know history are doomed to repeat it.

I’m doing a panel for a Sisters in Crime chapter on-line event this weekend, do tune in to any or all of the antics this weekend. It’s called Murderous March, and it’s being put on by the Upper Hudson Sisters chapter, and you can register to view the panels here. My panel is at 2:30 eastern, it’s called “It Was a Dark and Stormy Night,” and is being moderated by the wonderful Richie Narvaez. My co-panelists are the amazing Carol Pouliot, Edwin Hill, Tina Bellegarde, and M. E. Browning. It should be a pretty good time, I think.

And on that note, I think I’ll head into the spice mines. Have a lovely day, Constant Reader, and I’ll probably be back later.

Sleep Walk

Monday morning and back to the office afternoon a really lovely weekend, which wasn’t nearly long enough to satisfy anyone, really. I am wide awake, which is lovely, and I thought I wasn’t sleeping well last night–but this morning I feel rested and fine. Odd, right?

I really need to buckle down and start writing. I started three short stories ideas yesterday (“Passenger to Franklin”, “The Adventure of the Kaiser’s Spy1,” and “The Haunted Bridge,” for specifics) and I reviewed some of what I have already written on the next book, which was interrupted by the surgery. It’s now extended deadline is April 1, so yes, I need to get cracking. I did get a lot of work on the apartment done this weekend, and I was correct that I had ordered the wrong smart keyboard folio for my iPad, and Apple no longer makes them for mine because it’s too old. They recommended Amazon or eBay; I found one on eBay and ordered it so it will come later this week, which is terrific. Once I got home from refunding and returning that magic keyboard, I decided to go ahead and order two things from the Apple store to be delivered–an external wireless keyboard for my desktop, that is wider than the basic one and has the number pad, too, and a super storage flash drive that will also connect to my phone and iPad…and that resulted in an insane Kafka-like experience. The delivery was supposed to come between 3 and 5; their website showed that “Orrin” picked up my delivery at 4:46, and about half an hour later it was marked “out for delivery”–and the stuff can’t just be dropped off; it has to be handed to a person so you have to be available to go meet the delivery when it arrives. The website never updated, and the delivery never came. I finally connected with Apple Support on my phone, which was insane. Their records showed the driver had never picked it up–and it couldn’t be rescheduled for delivery today, all they could do was cancel it and refund the money. I don’t know if the “support person” I was communicating with was a real person or not, or if it was AI. Whoever it was, either they were AI, or English wasn’t their first language. I still don’t understand why they couldn’t just reschedule the delivery till today, but here we are, you know?

Thanks anyway, Apple. I have since decided that it was frivolous to buy those two items, so thank you for fucking this up and saving me quite a bit of money.

I did spend some time working on the apartment and it’s starting to look better. Hilariously, all the changes I made in the reorganization (the drawers, shelves in the kitchen, etc.) have already been forgotten so I have to go looking for things now–right now I can’t find where I put the printer ink–but that’s okay. I guess I am gaslighting myself!

I did spend some time this weekend reading Norah Lofts’ The Little Wax Doll, which I remember reading in junior high but as I read it, it feels very new to me. I don’t remember anything about it; maybe I never read it in the first place but had a copy which I started to read but never finished? Regardless, I am definitely enjoying it. It’s slow-burn horror, which is starting to slowly ratchet up (it’s one of those “rural communities that seem perfect but always have a dark secret” stories). I like Lofts’ writing style, which was more common in the mid-twentieth century work–she has a point of view character, Miss Mayfield, but her third person is removed; like a cross between an omniscient narrator and tight pov. It has a very Gothic feel to it that I really like, and I am looking forward to finishing it at some point.

We also started watching an Australian show, The Tourist, starring the always fun to watch Jamie Dornan (sigh) as a man who is in a car accident and gets amnesia, but he has to figure out who he is because a lot of people are trying to kill him. We’re two episodes into the first season (and there are two seasons thus far) so I am guessing he doesn’t find out for quite some time….

And on that note, I am heading into the spice mines. Have a marvelous Monday, Constant Reader, and I may be back later; one never can be sure.

  1. Yes, this is a Sherlock in 1916 New Orleans stories. ↩︎