Tag: Platonic

Only You

And here it is Wednesday again; halfway through the week, but this time I am heading into vacation time and not just the weekend. Huzzah! I feel pretty good this morning; no fatigue or aches detected, so let’s hope that lasts through the day. I was pretty fucking exhausted last night when I got home from the clinic; we weren’t super-super busy, but I was the only person counseling, so it was draining on top of being tired. I did hit a wall in the afternoon after my last patient, so came home and crashed out in my easy chair, intermittently dozing off and waking up again for a couple of hours before Paul got home. We watched the season finale of Platonic (which really is a lot of fun) and the latest Peacemaker, which had some big twists and a special guest star, too. I then went to bed early and slept deeply and well, or so it feels as I sit here swilling coffee and scarfing down coffee cake.

But that feels like a major win at this point.

I did get some work done on the book, but I was so damned tired I didn’t get very far with it before my brain shut down. And it’s October already! Where the hell did September go? This is what comes from wishing it were the weekend already and counting down the days; time goes by much faster, doesn’t it? I guess that’s what Mom meant by “wishing your life away,” wasn’t it? But I didn’t finish The Hunting Wives and it’s already Halloween Horror Month, so I am going to begin my reread of The Haunting of Hill House tonight. I also downloaded Clown in a Cornfield 2: Frendo Lives to listen to in the car while driving this weekend, and am taking a couple of books with me to read before bed every night in Alabama next weekend. I should read horror more throughout the year, of course, but the inability to focus and read something as quickly as I used to really bugs me. I also want to watch some new-to-me horror films, and probably rewatch some, like Halloween (always seasonally appropriate for October) and The Haunting–I may even rewatch Sinners so I can pick up on more things I missed the first time through.

I also need to finish writing this book so I can write some newsletters. It’s been a very hot minute; the last one was my Katrina anniversary essay, and that was now over a month ago. But Bouchercon exhausted me, and it took me a while to get over that issue, only to have the reaction to my vaccine from this past weekend. It feels almost like I spent all of September fatigued and tired. But I also learned how to give myself my bi-monthly injection this month, so that’s a win, and I also reconnected with my writing brain, which was a HUGE win. That has also improved my mood and outlook dramatically; I hate when I fear that the writing part of my brain has dried up or atrophied. I doubt that I will ever get to be as prolific as I used to be, and not certain that I would even want that, to be honest–at least not while I still am working full time. I just don’t have the energy or the bandwidth to produce between three and five books in a year anymore…or the desire. I know I have a lot of book and story ideas I may never get around to writing, but whereas that thought used to fill me with panic…I’ve resigned myself to that reality and no longer get anxious about that inevitable truth.

Of course, that could be a side effect of the anxiety medication, too. I did also worry that the medication had sapped my will to write…but that is clearly not the case.

I have lots of things to get done around the office this morning, too…but I don’t think the clinic is very busy today, and it’s not just me this morning. I need to do some chores tonight in addition to writing–I was too tired last night and the kitchen is a disaster area, literally, again–but am feeling good about things and getting back on top of everything.

And on that note, I am going to get cleaned up and head into the spice mines. Have a great Wednesday, Constant Reader, and I’ll say hello again tomorrow morning.

Jacob Elordi in Saltburn, looking like a snack despite the poor choice in reading materials.

Third Rate Romance

Monday and back to the office with me this morning. The Saints lost yesterday, but at least it was an exciting game. I slept well and feel good this morning, which is a good thing. I have to cover the clinic today instead of having an Admin day, and we’re book pretty solid, just as we were last Thursday and almost everyone showed up. It’s fine, I do love my job after all, but sometimes that’s a little draining. Ah, well, I can go home after work and chill out with my Sparky, who was cuddling with me this morning after the first tap of the snooze button. Bless his little heart, that’s not exactly helping me get up in the morning.

Yesterday, despite the Saints loss, was pretty good. I felt good when I got up in the morning–there was some fatigue still in my hips, but nothing horrifying–and while I didn’t do all the chores I wanted to get done, I did do some, and ran the dishwasher. I still have all those boxes from Costco to take out to the trash, but maybe I can get that done tonight after work. But while the Saints game was on, I actually wrote and read some more of The Hunting Wives, which is so different from the show but in a very interesting way. And the writing work I got done was good work; I could tell as I was working that this was good stuff, which is awesome. The short story is due today, and I just need to sand down some of the rougher edges on it before I turn it in, and then full focus on getting Scotty finished. I was actually thinking a lot about the Scotty yesterday, too, which is kind of cool. I feel like I’m getting back into the writing groove again, and once the Scotty is finished, I’d like to get a rough draft of Chlorine finished by the end of the year and perhaps start another novel before January 1. We’ll see, I guess.

We also didn’t watch the Emmys, primarily because we don’t care that much, choosing to watch The Thursday Murder Club, with its incredible cast, instead. I’ve not read the book it was based on, but have heard great things about it, and the movie was absolutely charming and very well done. I do hope there will be more of these…and then we watched this week’s Platonic before starting the new season of Only Murders in the Building. (I saw someone on social media this weekend say that they were convinced the best way to watch the show was to assume Steve Martin and Martin Short are playing a gay couple–which I can actually see, but alas not canon.)

As many of us saw many so-called allies to marginalized communities slip into their Klan robes over the course of the last week and weekend, outing themselves as, if not racists and homophobes, then are certainly okay with homophobia and racism and oppression…this morning I noticed on social media that there’s yet another furor in the m/m community; this time about those conservative women who idolized the late unlamented provocateur and everything he stood for…I generally no longer comment on this subgenre of literature as a general rule because I have nothing to gain by saying anything. I noticed back in the late aughts that there was an awful lot of homophobia and bigotry and fetishization in that community, and merely asking “why do you want to write about gay men when you hate and marginalize them?” unleashed a torrent of hatred on me…you know, typical straight white women who cannot stand being questioned about anything. One of the “authors” publicly claimed that I was “clearly jealous of their careers”–um, you’re neither Harlan Coben nor Stephen King nor Nora Roberts; why would I be jealous of you? The vitriol and hate and dogpiling by these horrible women ON ACTUAL GAY MEN with questions about them and their motivations…no, can’t possibly be homophobic, could they? They also would threaten us with voting against queer equality unless we knuckled under to their appropriation and creation of a fake public homosexuality. The stark refusal of any m/m authors to denounce homophobes within their own community back then was kind of a tell to me that I and other gay men are not only not safe in those communities, but that they would always close ranks if there was anything critical from an “outsider.”

I’ve never cared who writes what, to be honest. If you want to write about gay men falling in love and finding their happily ever after, go for it and I wish you well with your writing and I hope you do well with it, as I do every other author out there (until you prove yourself to be filth). But if you’re going to, and you don’t support queer equality (or vote against it because reasons), you really need to look inward and reexamine yourself and your motivations: why are you writing (or reading) about people you don’t support or care about? How is that any less of a betrayal than those of performers who make money off queer audiences but actually hate them and are transactional (cough Kristin Chenowith among others cough)? If you write about queer people we are always going to assume you’re safe.

Talk about a bait and switch. You’re contemptible– a deplorable, if you will.

And yes, we get angry when we are stabbed in the back. It’s also why I never completely trust “allies.”

But it is nice, in 2025, to see m/m authors calling the homophobia out. Thank you, m/m writing community, for standing with us in this moment.

And on that note, I am heading into the spice mines. Have a lovely Monday, and I’ll be back in the morning.

Count on Me

Tuesday and back to the office with me! Much as I hate getting up to an alarm, it wasn’t so rough this morning. I would prefer to stay in bed much longer under my pile of blankets and Sparky on my pillow above my head, but them’s the breaks, I guess. I made hardly a dent into my to-do list that I made yesterday morning, but again–them’s the breaks. I don’t think we’re terribly busy today. Next week? We are super-booked up with appointments next week….but even next week is a little soon for any STI’s to show up from this past Decadence weekend. (FYI, the window period for gonorrhea can be up to four weeks…)

It was a lovely weekend of rest and relaxation. Bouchercon is here this weekend, and so I am off Thursday and Friday so if I want to go down there and be seen, I can. I am hosting Noir at the Bar on Thursday night at the Crescent City Brewhouse, and have dinner plans for Lilette on Saturday night, but I don’t think (or remember) if I’ve agreed to anything else. I suspect I’ll end up not going down there very often or very much, to be honest. We shall see how it all goes, and I suspect it will have more to do with my fatigue levels than anything else. It really irritates me that I am still not at 100%. Patience, Gregalicious, patience. I’ve never been very patient.

It was a fairly calm and quiet Labor Day. I did get the downstairs orderly again, and did the floors (I love my new vacuum cleaner), and dipped into The Hunting Wives for a bit. I also made some notes on the new Scotty and also came up with how to write a short story I’ve been struggling with for years (staggering to realize how long that some stories sit in my files before I get around to finishing them), and I am not entirely sure this idea will actually work, so we’ll have to see how that all turns out.

We watched Platonic and Foundation last night, and we started the second season of Shrinking (ROY KENT!!!), which was a lot of fun, and I look forward to getting back into Shrinking tonight.

It was so lovely to come downstairs to a clean apartment with the rugs clean and put back in place (Sparky always moves them), and I had some lovely coffee this morning as well. It’s an odd week–I’m only in the office today and tomorrow, and I have a lot of things to do before the end of the work week. I also have a doctor’s appointment Friday morning as well…

And on that note, I am heading into the spice mines. Have a lovely Tuesday wherever you are, Constant Reader!

Bye Bye Love

Saturday! Sparky let me sleep a little later this morning, but I still have some physical fatigue this morning. I seem to be mentally alert, but the physical shit is weighing me down. We did run errands after work yesterday, including Costco (I got a new vacuum cleaner for my birthday next week), and when we got home from everything and everything had been brought in and put away, I was done for the day. I spent most of the evening being a cat bed and watching documentaries on Youtube about history. Paul eventually finished his work duties and we watched the most recent Platonic, which I love.

Today I have an errand to run and groceries to order for delivery. I want to spend some more time with The Hunting Wives, which I started Thursday night, and my other current books. I need to clean the apartment, too–it’s a slovenly mess–and would again like to get some writing done today as well. I have to say getting groceries delivered might be the best thing to come out of the illness–now I never want to set foot in a grocery store for an extended period of time; I don’t mind dashing in for a few things every now and then. It’s much better that way and I can always swing by the one in the CBD on the way home from the office. I also need to assemble the new vacuum cleaner, so I will probably spend some time getting the floors taken care of, and it’s long overdue.

I certainly am enjoying my coffee and breakfast this morning. It’s already bright and sunny outside, which is lovely and probably means yet another heat advisory. August is flying by, and I really need to buckle down and get my act together. The fatigue and lethargy has been brutal this summer, and I have to understand that I will probably never go back to the way I was before I got sick. Which is also fine; I have nothing to prove to anyone anymore, and certainly not to myself, do I?

I picked up some new books Thursday on my way home from the office: the new Chuck Tingle (Lucky Day); She Didn’t Stand a Chance by Stacie Grey; and Dogs Don’t Break Hearts by ‘Nathan Burgoine. I also need to prune the books again, don’t I? It’s been a hot minute since I dropped off a donation box at the library. Part and parcel of the cleaning/organizing process, isn’t it? I still am a book hoarder, but I’m getting better. I certainly am not buying as many books as I did before. I really do need to make progress on the TBR stacks and piles all over this messy, overly dusty place.

And when the heat and humidity break, I am going to clean my filthy filthy windows.

I also have another newsletter to write this weekend.

And on that note, I am going to head over to my easy chair to read more of my current reads before running my errands and getting cleaned up and starting on the house. Have a lovely Saturday, Constant Reader, and I’ll be back, most likely tomorrow morning.

The goddess Isis guarding the Canopic Shrine of Pharaoh Tutankhamen

Fluffy Tufts

Tuesday morning and I have the day off for the holiday blog. Huzzah! Although it’s going to seriously fuck with my head once I return to work tomorrow. I love these short work weeks, quite frankly; but at the same time they inevitably disorient me and make me uncertain of both day and date. But I will survive and get through this.

Yesterday was a bit of a revelation. I slept deeply and well Sunday night for the first time since leaving for the trip (I did manage one good night’s sleep in Kentucky, but that’s another story involving a massive thunderstorm, a loud weather alert alarm in the other part of the house and a brief power outage) with the end result that returning to the office for the first time in over a week wasn’t an unpleasant experience. There were some things I had to get caught up because they’d slid while I was gone (I take care of so many little things that are nevertheless important that my co-workers don’t even realize need to be done), and of course it was a lame duck workday–wedged between a weekend and a holiday–so the energy was weird and and we had a lot of unexpected problems to handle for clients, which we did handle with aplomb, but I felt off-balance all day and the time just flew; next thing I knew it was time to pack up and leave for the day–but I never got tired. I usually am groggy and partially out of it all morning, and hit a wall in the middle of the afternoon, but yesterday I felt just as energetic and relaxed as I did when I got to the office at seven thirty yesterday morning. I had to run over to Midcity to pick up my PrEP prescription, then swung over to Uptown to get the mail (a check! a check!), stopped at CVS to pick up some Claritin-D and my Xanax prescription before heading down to Tchoupitoulas to make some groceries at Rouse’s. I also bought too much perishable food, as it my wont; I want to make watermelon soup today (because it’s cool and refreshing) and chicken salad…and I also want to make a bowl of salad. I was thinking about making Shrimp Creole for dinner–but again, hot. I also bought hamburgers to cook out; I’ll probably go ahead and do that anyway at some point this afternoon or in the early evening. (Paul got me a turkey sandwich from Subway for dinner that I’ll need to eat at some point today.)

I slept really well again last night, too. Paul and I finished watching The Suspect, which was interesting and disturbing at the same time, and then moved on to this week’s Platonic (which is hilarious; you should be watching this show) and finally to Deadline with James D’arcy, which is quite interesting. I stayed up later than I usually do–almost midnight–because I never felt tired, and yet once I went to bed I went into a deep sleep that lasted until around six, and then I was able to sleep again until seven thirty. I feel good today, too; rested and energetic and peaceful, which is nice. I honestly feel better than I have in months, for two days in a row now, which is lovely and marvelous. (I also have cut back on my caffeine the last two days…which also may have something to do with it.)

So, what are my big plans for this holiday? I have some chores to do, as always, and of course I need to rearrange the refrigerator from the Costco run on Sunday (Paul helped put things away, which I appreciated but…I am like my mother in that while I appreciate the help, it always means I’ll have to redo it at some point….it’s really frightening how like my mother I am), and I want to finish listening to Carol Goodman’s marvelous The Seduction of Water, which I have about an hour left on (I can do it while folding laundry and reorganizing and cleaning this morning), and then I want to get started on Megan Abbott’s Beware the Woman. Also, one of my Alfred Hitchcock Presents volumes purchased on eBay opens with Daphne du Maurier’s superb story “The Birds” (yes, the story Hitchcock’s film was based upon) so I’ve been rereading that lately. Du Maurier was such a master; I’ll probably talk about the story more once I’ve finished rereading. At some point Paul will get up and we’ll probably watch some movies this afternoon. I’ve really only been in the mood lately for true crime documentaries or comedies (we watched Dirty Grandpa before I left for the north; wrong on so many levels and yet hilarious) lately, and much as I am enjoying the new Tom Holland series on Apple TV (The Crowded Room), it’s been much too heavy for me to watch lately. We may get caught up on it today, who knows?

I also have an out of nowhere unexpected offer to write another book, which is also lovely. But it will be from scratch, unless I can find something else to repurpose. I’ll spend some time brainstorming that today, too.

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

In the Gold Dust Rush

Hoping to get another “adult content” warning on Twitter with today’s post picture. I’ve been getting them a lot lately; trying to figure out what precisely sets off the prudish bigoted algorithm? I’ve certainly enjoyed being told by Twitter services that derogatory slurs aren’t a violation of their new Musk-like terms of service. Twitter was always a shitshow, but while it did raise my blood pressure on occasion for the most part I enjoyed engaging with friends on there; but since the Muscadine takeover, it’s not even fun to use for the sake of simple entertainment. I am really curious how people think he’s some kind of genius businessman. Dudes, he inherited a fucking emerald mine. GENIUS.

Honestly.

But it’s Wednesday and Pay the Bills Day again; always a joy and pleasure. But at least I can pay them, as I always like to remind myself when the horror of paying the bills rolls around every two weeks. I am hoping to get further caught up on paying the bills down (or off, what a precious dream that is!) this summer; I’m getting my teeth fixed in September and that’s not going to be free or cheap, and you don’t even want to know how much my hearing aids are going to cost. So, paying down the debt is very important because I am about to be taking on a lot more of it, alas. But I am happy to get my mouth taken care of, and hearing…well, it can wait a little longer because I am not entirely sure not being able to hear 100% is necessarily a bad thing anymore. I haven’t slept well this week, and feel tired and achy this morning. I still have this bug or whatever it is that Paul gave me over the weekend, but now that I’ve been awake awhile I am feeling somewhat better than I did when I first arose from the shallow depths of Morpheus this morning. I hate waking up and spending the first few moments out of bed coughing and gagging, but…I do feel better now. Just tired and achy a bit this morning. The COVID test yesterday was negative, thank you, baby Jesus, so whatever this is, probably has something to do with summer cold/heat wave/barometric pressure fucking with my sinuses.

LSU won again last night, beating Tennessee, but now in order to stay in the College World Series they have to beat Wake Forest twice, since they lost to them the other night. The score was 3-2, so it was close and LSU led most of the game, so there’s a chance they can do it. It’s really now just a matter of seeing who Florida is going to play for the championship, either LSU or Wake Forest. Gah.

I got some more work done yesterday on the book–I need to get a lot more done, as I am way behind now–but I am thinking I can iron these thorny problems out mostly today, and thus get it turned in. Obviously, I wanted to get it in already but being sick and not sleeping isn’t helping. Hopefully tonight I’ll be so exhausted that I’ll have a lovely nice deep sleep tonight. One can hope, anyway. We finished watching the 100 Years of Warner Brothers documentary last night–I still think cramming the first fifty or sixty years of the studio’s history into one episode (which didn’t even mention Joan Crawford!) was a mistake, but it was also produced in house for HBO MAX, so…it’s a fluffy promo piece. We then watched the third season premiere of The Righteous Gemstones, which was okay, and this week’s episode of Platonic, which is one of the funniest shows currently airing. I am really becoming a very big fan of Rose Byrne, who is excellent in everything she does and can play a wide range of characters and styles and is perfectly at home in any of them.

And on that note, I am heading into the spice mines. Have a lovely Wednesday, Constant Reader, and I will check in on you again tomorrow.

Sorry

And we have cycled around once again to work-at-home Friday. Huzzah? Huzzah.

I will be taking a short break from my work-at-home duties today to interview Margot Douaihy today for S&S’ Pride Month extravaganza. Ah, the terror of not sounding stupid when interviewing someone really smart and talented. Heavy heaving sigh. I will of course post a link to it when it goes live, so you can hear how smart she is and how much I fumble in interviews. Her Scorched Grace is probably the best debut novel you’re going to read this year, and I highly recommend it. It’s not too late to get a copy, either. (You can order it https://bookshop.org/p/books/scorched-grace-a-sister-holiday-mystery-margot-douaihy/18283014?ean=9781638930242–I don’t understand why this stupid site won’t let me do short hyperlinks like it used to, but it’s fucking annoying. Anyway, buy the book. It’s terrific.)

And it’s a three day weekend! Huzzah! I am looking forward to getting some rest, getting a lot of editing and revising done, and hopefully some cleaning and reading.

I was terribly tired yesterday, the way I inevitably am on Thursdays, and really didn’t want to run errands when I got off work, but I put on my big boy pants and did it anyway. I decided my brain was too mushy to work on the book–I went ahead and read the next few chapters I’ll be editing after work today, so I did do something, at any rate–while relaxing with a purring cat in my lap after I did some chores. I had to unload the dishwasher and reload it, plus fold the clothes in the dryer before moving the load in the washer (I started this on Wednesday night but completely forgot once I was in the clutches of Vanderpump Rules), and tried to do some things to straighten up the kitchen before the energy flagged and I was forced back to the easy chair by mental and physical fatigue. There are, after all, worse things. But I can get a lot of revising done this weekend, which is terrific. It would be great if I can get the whole thing finished by next weekend, wouldn’t that be marvelous? I slept deeply and well last night, too–and managed to sleep in all the way until seven thirty, which is when I usually get to the office. I was exhausted last night when I crawled up the stairs to bed, but as Paul noted, “it’s not that you’re old, you just get up really early every morning now” which is true. Funny how I managed to go almost my entire life without having a 9 to 5 job for very long, and now my body clock is adjusting to it at this late stage of my life. My body is now used to it; I just have to retrain my brain to stop thinking in terms of losing time by going to bed earlier since I get up earlier and thus have more time during the day.

We started watching Platonic these last few nights, a new Apple Plus show starring Rose Byrne and Seth Rogan. I do like Seth Rogan and think he’s funny, and of course love Rose Byrne since her days on Damages, which I feel doesn’t get nearly enough credit for how fucking good of a show it was, and its amazing cast, led by GLENN CLOSE, who was phenomenal as Patty Hewes, super attorney and all around horrible person. Platonic is quite funny, and the chemistry between the two as platonic former best friends who come together again after Rogan’s character gets divorced (the Byrne character didn’t like the woman he married) like no time has passed. Luke McFarlane is beautiful as always as her gorgeous husband, essentially the Ricky to her Lucy. I do recommend it, it’s clever and funny and well written, and, like all Apple shows, very high production values.

I also managed to proof my short story “Solace in a Dying Hour,” forthcoming in an Australian anthology titled This Fresh Hell yesterday, as well as reviewed a book contract for signing–and emailed the corrections necessary to the contract in order for me to sign it. I also spent some time doing research for this afternoon’s interview; I’ll spend some time reviewing the research and coming up with great questions for her, or at least ones that won’t embarrass me by being too stupid and the kind of thing she’s been asked a million times. We also started watching the Hillsong documentary, which is interesting because I really don’t know much of anything about that church; but it’s a megachurch which probably means the heresy of the prosperity gospel, and yes, it’s a heresy. Jesus was not about “believe in Me and you’ll get earthly treasures”; the promise was supposed to be about a wonderful afterlife. (It always has amused and saddened me that so many people miss that Christianity isn’t about life but death and the afterlife; the point is to be the best possible person in your human life to earn a good afterlife, so yes, the prosperity gospel is heresy–“it is easier for a camel to pass through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to get into heaven”–does that ring any bells? At some point I am going to have to talk about religion and how it’s been perverted from a guide to life to so many things that it isn’t supposed to be…)

I also rewatched the first part of the Vanderpump Rules reunion in its longer, no commercials version on Peacock, and that version is by far the best of the two. It flows better, is edited better, and the extra seventeen minutes of public shaming for the Toms (Sandoval and Schwartz) was worth every second. I really need to spend some time on that blog entry about reality television I started after the wrap of the last season of Real Housewives of Beverly Hills; because those two shows are entwined; Rules was initially a spin-off of Beverly Hills, with Lisa Vanderpump going back and forth between the two shows (until she quit Housewives). So much has already been written about the Scandoval that what new or interesting thing can I find to say about it, or the layers to levels of cheating and adultery being laid out on the show by its cast? I am sure none of the players involved in this had the slightest idea how explosively this would go viral, turning the three players (Sandoval, his mistress, his enabling best friend) into pariahs. Not even Camille Grammer in her legendarily villainous first season on Beverly Hills got this kind of publicity or exposure–she did get the cover of People magazine–and of course, the legal troubles of Erica Girardi/Beverly Hills cast drama got some coverage in major papers because of the massive frauds perpetrated by her husband (and get the fuck out of here with the “she didn’t know” bullshit), but still–nothing in reality television prepared anyone, let alone Bravo, with how this affair within the cast would explode and become a worldwide fascination…while Andy Cohen and the network count their cash as the money keeps rolling in. The reunion episode got over two million viewers, which is huge for a reality show. The question is, do I finish my entry about reality shows and their appeal before the reunion episodes finish airing, or can I go ahead and do it now?

Always the question, really.

And on that note, I am going to make another cup of coffee and head into the spice mines. Have a lovely morning, Constant Reader, and I’ll be back with you again tomorrow.