Tag: Pinckley Prize

Makin’ It

I’ve always felt that Tuesdays are worse than Mondays. Sure, it sucks to get up on Monday morning and go back to the office, but at least you’re coming off the weekend. Tuesday means you’re not even halfway through the week and you’ve already worked the day before. Horror of horrors! I felt this way even in high school–which is where and when I started wishing my life away, as my mom always used to say. Of course, she didn’t start saying that until she stopped working and became, for want of a better word, a housewife. Such an ugly and weird sounding word, isn’t it? But it’s better than “tradwife,” which just might be the stupidest thing I’ve ever heard–and the whole “tradwife values” thing just kind of turns my stomach ever so slightly.

I do want to write about one, of course. I also want to write about one of those horribly creepy “boymoms.” Straight people are so weird…

But this morning I feel rested and good. I ran some errands after work last night, which was not as painful as I might have expected, and I have to run one tonight when I leave the office. I finished revising my short story and send it in (it’s for a queer crime anthology called Crime Ink), which felt really good (the story is an excerpt from Never Kiss a Stranger called “The Rhinestone”), and I did work on the book a little around Sparky’s intense neediness. I think Paul is moving into the Monteleone tomorrow, so after tonight I’ll be home alone with a super needy cat, which will be challenging. I also need to figure out my schedule for the weekend’s Festivals. I am moderating a panel for the Pinckley Prize tenth anniversary celebration, I know, and I have to do the anthology launch Saturday night, and I am in the Dorothy Allison tribute reading. There’s also a panel on Sunday I am on, and of course both the opening and closing parties. Sigh. I get tired just thinking about it, you know?

But it’ll be fun and invigorating intellectually, and it’s always inspiring to be around wonderful people who love books and writing.

Remember the author I talked about who created a firestorm by writing and publishing that dreadful book where the man fell in love with his best friend’s three-year-old daughter but waits until she was legal before doing anything (as though the pedophilic grooming wasn’t bad enough)? She was arrested yesterday and charged (in Australia) for possession of, and intent to distribute, child pornography. The copies of her own book was the evidence they needed for the arrest! I don’t know what the laws are in Australia, but quite frankly, arguing that it’s a “slippery slope” to be arrested for “dark romance” writing? Dark romance actually requires consent, otherwise it’s rape. You’re trying to ban queer books in the US, yet people are trying to defend the principle of free speech about a book that is 100% about grooming? Yeah, miss me with that. Child rape is child rape, period; and I think the fact so many people missed the real point of Lolita and think it’s a “romance” is why no one should be writing about child rape like it’s just another style of “dark” romance.

And who would ever think to themselves, “I’m going to write a dark romance about grooming!”

Someone I wouldn’t let around kids, that’s who.

Not all speech is protected–which no one seems to understand, which isn’t surprising since they don’t understand their own protected right to free speech and what precisely that means. We really are the dumbest country. This whole “let’s share classified intelligence with a reporter in a group chat” thing would be laughable if it wasn’t so fucking terrifying. IMAGINE EISENHOWER SENDING THE D-DAY PLANS TO A REPORTER, or Truman accidentally telling the Washington Post about the plans to use the atomic bomb on Japan the day before?

Americans have never appreciated our system, or they’d have learned how it works better when they were younger. (I wish I had a quarter for every time I had to explain the Electoral College to smart people–or people I’d thought were smart previously–in 2000 I’d have retired years ago.) So, we kind of have the government we deserve right now.

And on that grim note, I am heading into the spice mines. Have a lovely day. Constant Reader, and I’ll check in with you again at some point.

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Dirty Laundry

Wednesday! I have my biannual doctor visit this morning, so won’t be going into the office until later; I am doing bar testing this evening as well. I hope to get more edits put in–seriously, passing the halfway point made such a mental difference; each page I finish it like another step down the other side of the mountain. I am really looking forward to finishing; I know exactly what I have to do with this in the final draft, and am really really excited about finally finishing and getting it out there.

Huzzah! Yay, me!

So, Paul had dinner with a friend last night, and while I was waiting for him to come home (I’m not enjoying the book I’m reading and may put it aside), I decided to watch a documentary on HBO: Bolshoi Babylon.

Wow.

Over the last few years I’ve become obsessively interested in ballet; but most ballet stories are generally about women–understandably so; the men are primarily there, for the most part, to show off the women and their skills–but male ballet dancers are fascinating to me. For one thing, their bodies are amazing, and for another, what they can make their bodies do is even more amazing. It’s rare for a male ballet dancer to outshine his female counterparts; but when they do, they become big stars. (Nureyev, Baryshnikov, etc.) The world of ballet also seems very dark to me, very noir; the way the dancers torture their bodies to make beauty and art, the fragility of the egos, the constant need for approval–and of course, as dark as it is, it can get even darker.

Bolshoi Babylon is about the acid attack on ballet director Sergei Fimin several years ago; I remember when it happened. Fimin was a star of the ballet, became the artistic director, and then was viciously attacked, acid thrown in his face, and a long, painful recovery from the attack followed–he eventually got the sight back in one eye, but remained blind in the other. A male dancer in the company was behind the attack; Fimin had passed over his girlfriend for a lead, and he wanted revenge for his love. (I was very much reminded of the Tonya-Nancy figure skating drama; ballet and figure skating also have a lot in common.) But the documentary simply uses the attack as a launching point for an examination of the world of the Bolshoi; its internal and external politics, and also focuses on some of the dancers and what their lives are like.

It was riveting.

I’ve long wanted to write a noir about figure skating, and another about ballet. Watching Bolshoi Babylon only emphasized that desire; alas, I have this manuscript to complete, a Scotty to write, and I am also toying with that horror novel. But I think I shall continue my researches into both figure skating and ballet; Paul got home and watched the end of the documentary, and he agreed that it would be interesting to go to the New Orleans Ballet.

I also have been crushing on Italian ballet dancer Roberto Bolle for years now; thank you, Sarah Hilary, for bringing him to my attention!

Roberto-Bolle-Chi-2

I also got involved in an interesting discussion on a friend’s Facebook thread about author Louise Penny, whom I’ve not read, and who was just here in New Orleans to accept the Pinckney Prize, as this year’s recipient. I had to miss the event, as it was last week. But I do have a copy of her first novel, and I will try to read it before Bouchercon.

So much to read before Bouchercon! I can’t believe I have homework.