Tag: podcasts

Cast Your Fate To The Wind

Ah, and here we are, three day weekend in the rearview mirror as we coast headfirst into a Tuesday that is destined to feel like a Monday all day. I set the alarm and got up at seven-ish; an hour later than a work day and really, something completely sensible to do on days off. An extra hour still feels like a treat, and then I have the entire morning to get things done. I washed dishes, made breakfast, wrote two posts, and then dug into the book and cranked out over two thousand words before noon–with the entire day still ahead of me. I wish I could tell you that I worked on some other writing, but I didn’t. I was reading newsletters and magazines that have stacked up (another thing that is stupid–I let magazines pile up, collect dust, and just be clutter rather than simply reading them at first opportunity and then tossing them in the trash–or tearing out an article that may be of interest to me at a later date (can’t imagine how all that paper piled up on me over the years). I am pleased to say I have only three back issues of Texas Monthly (their true crime reporting is stellar) and the latest 64 Parishes to read now. I also watched some news clips on Youtube, fell into a wormhole about the history of the Cathars in southern France and the Albigensian Crusade that killed them all, and finally started reading about the Baptist War in Jamaica–there’ll be more on that at another time, trust me on that– before doing some filing and touching up around here. All in all, it was a lovely weekend, and I am so delighted to be back into the book again (I was worried about picking it back up again after the last few days not working on it), and knowing that my editorial and creative eye is coming back together, too. I still have to get used to my life as it is now, and I know there are going to be bad days that I just need to accept and roll with, and not beat myself up over those sorts of things. Being too tired to write or create is a valid reason for not doing so. It just is painful and the writing isn’t any good, anyway–and it’s not like I need to prove to myself that I can write a goddamn crime novel, do I?

I feel pretty rested and good this morning. We shall see how that develops for the rest of the day. I think we’re pretty busy today; or maybe not; maybe it was next week? We always get busy at the STI clinic after Southern Decadence…which kind of makes me a little proud, because we’ve trained our clients so well that they know about the window periods for the bacterial infections so they wait. (The schedule isn’t that busy; I just checked it–laptop came home with me on Thursday–so yes, it’s next week that is super-busy.) I have to make groceries on the way home from the office tonight; I may be too tired to work on the book tonight but…that’s okay.

Yesterday afternoon I was kind of at loose ends and dangerously close to being bored, when I remembered a conversation at work recently, in which one of my co-workers told me he loves to watch bad movies with a friend to laugh at them, so I asked, as is my wont, if they’d seen Voyage of the Rock Aliens–I have yet to find anyone else who has seen it (I saw it twice in the theater) and so that was in my mind. Right now I can’t remember the brain trail that led me to think of it yesterday, but I did, and the whole movie is up on Youtube…so yes, I rewatched it, and…it really can’t be watched alone to be laughed at properly. Anyway, it was the great Ruth Gordon’s final movie (what an epitaph!), starred Pia Zadora and an incredibly beautiful young Craig Sheffer. It’s a weird mash-up of the bad scifi and beach movies of the 50s and 60s, a lot of the humor is of the time (I’m sure kids today, or even viewers of any age for that matter, would get the Lake Eerie jokes, because the lake was cleaned up), and it’s even more godawful to rewatch after forty years or so. It may even be worth it’s own entry…

We also started watching Kaos, which is demented in a very fun way; a modern twist on Greek mythology. A reboot kind of, if you will. Jeff Goldblum is perfect as Zeus, as is Janet McTeer as Hera. Of course, since it involves Orpheus and Eurydice, it put me in mind of Hadestown, which I saw on Broadway in New York thanks to Mike Ford. I’m looking forward to watching more tonight, if I’m not too tired and Paul isn’t working on a grant the way he has been for the last week or so. Of course, I could unwind with my Alison Gaylin ARC, which I am doling out to myself as a reward for getting things done.

I am very glad that my brain has finally unlocked and I am not only writing again, but writing the way I did before the recent times of troubles. I’m enjoying it, and am having fun with it again. I don’t know if I am all the way there again yet, and I’m not all the way back to normal (or whatever passes for normal in my life) quite yet, but I don’t feel like there’s a dark cloud in my brain and just getting through the day is a triumph anymore. Now that it’s unlocked, I can also see that some of the stories I’ve written over the last four years and not been able to place (or finish)? Now that my mind is more clear than it’s been in a while, I can see what the problems are–the voice and tone of the story. They’re written kind of in a cheery, pleasant tone, and that doesn’t work with what the stories are about. What was I thinking? No, they need to be colder, and more desperate, unsentimental, which isn’t as easy for me as it should be. They need to be harder and colder and crueler, more desperate, in order for the stories to work, which is also pretty cool. I’m so glad I’ve figured this out at long last! I also think part of the reason I made the stories not as dark as they needed to be was because of the shitshow life had become for us all and I didn’t want to write anything dark. My brain was telling me something, wasn’t it?

I also walked to Walgreens to get treats for His Impious Majesty, listening to the My Dad Wrote a Porno podcast and rather enjoying it–it’s really hilarious, you should check it out–when the door opened in my brain and I finally figured out what podcasts actually are: they’re like radio shows of old only with a more modern delivery system. so we’ve kind of circled back around the entertainment my grandparents used to enjoy–radio/podcast, they are basically the same, with the primary difference how you get distributed to listeners, kind of like do-it-yourself radio. Yes, it only took me how many years to figure it out? Heavy sigh. But now that I finally get them, I can start looking for others that could be fun and informational. I just couldn’t wrap my mind around them–sometimes I have to connect newer technology to older so I can understand its purpose. Yes, I am well aware how obtuse I can be, which I think is a part of the wacky brain chemistry that I want to talk to my doctor about. I don’t need medication to control the wandering mind syndrome, as I’ve remembered how to write again, so that’s not an issue. But it would be nice to have a diagnosis rather than simply wondering and self-diagnosing from my reading.

I also started relearning German on Duolingo this weekend, which makes sense. There are crusty memories deep in the recesses of my brain, and doesn’t it make more sense to try triggering my memory rather than starting from scratch with a whole new language. So far, so good. I can order coffee and bread and wine in German now. So, when I am in a German coffee shop I can say, kaffee und brot, bitte.

I didn’t really have much FOMO about Bouchercon over the weekend–obviously, I know I would have had fun had I gone because now I know too many people not to have fun, if that makes any kind of sense to you. I did miss seeing everyone, but my primary regret in not going was not being able to participate in the voting down of removing the DEI (aka inclusion) from the Bouchercon operating by-laws…yes another attempt by a mediocre white man who used to be on the Board and was long associated with it (back in its misogynist, racist, homophobic days where that kind of shit was not only tolerated, but enjoyed) deciding that since he had a problem with inclusion the entire conference should just do away with it. Thanks, Al Abramson, I remember reporting being treated homophobically by programming years ago and you just patted me on the head and basically told me to get over it. Fuck you all the way to hell and back, and don’t think we aren’t fucking organized, you miserable piece of bigoted trash. Can’t imagine why queers felt uncomfortable and unsafe attending your fucking event, and the trash LOC couldn’t even be bothered reassuring us, and in fact, exposed how homophobic the LOC was. But thanks to the alert Board members and some others–CWoC, QCW–rallied the troops, but the Board also refused to consider it and the refusal of this last minute last ditch attempt to make it a Karen-and-Chad conference again. But this is also why we have to be forever vigilant, because there’s always some mediocrity trying to drive out the marginalized.

Must have been a real bitch-slap seeing how diverse the Anthony Awards were.

And on that note, I am heading into the spice mines. Have a lovely Tuesday that feels like Monday, and may be back later.

Personality

Thursday and my last day in the office for the week. Huzzah. I was tired after work yesterday–I made groceries and went to get the mail–but I did get some things donw last night around the house before collapsing into my easy chair. I watched another one of those “Staged Right” documentaries (this time about Evita), and then Paul came down and we watched another episode of True Detective: Night Country, which really took a turn last night! We’re enjoying the show tremendously, despite all the noise on-line about people hating it…and by people, I mean men. I don’t think I’ve seen a single post trashing the show that wasn’t by a (straight) man? Which sets off my “bullshit misogyny” alarm, frankly.

The weather had turned yesterday by the time I got off work; it had gotten a bit colder and the wind had dramatically picked up. It was also kind of gray, which reminded me of how it is before a flooding rain….borderline tornado weather. It feels cold in the apartment this morning, and the high for today is at about sixty. It may rain today, and there’s a 95% chance of it tomorrow. I have early PT tomorrow morning, and at some point I need to drive to Metairie to return something to the Apple store (I’d ordered a keyboard at long last for my iPad, but it’s the wrong size). Loathe as I am to do that–go out there–it was far too expensive for me to just slide and do nothing about. Heavy heaving sigh. But really, it’s not that big of a hassle, and in going out there, I can actually treat myself to Sonic or Atomic Burger as a treat for having to go to Metairie and deal with Lakeside Mall. Shudder.1

I feel good and rested this morning, which is very unusual for a Thursday. Last Thursday was like this, too–I ended the day feeling energized, and got a lot done when I got home. I hope that will be the case tonight. I have loads of laundry in both washer and dryer that need to be dealt with tonight; I need to empty and reload the dishwasher; the floors are looking horrific; and of course I need to assemble the shower caddy. I also need to redo my to-do list, and perhaps make one just for the weekend. I am going to have to go make groceries at some point this weekend, too. I need to go by Lowe’s at some point, too. We need more filters and I am going to splurge on a new barbecue grill, as the last one is well past its last legs, frankly. I also need to reorganize both the freezer and the refrigerator, as well as get rid of some more boxes of stuff that is no longer needed to be kept.

I love feeling reinvigorated in the mornings, frankly. I don’t know how long this will last, of course, and it’s possible I’ll get tired by the end of my shift, but that’s also okay. I don’t beat myself up over being tired anymore, and maybe the loss of anxiety is making me lean into my own stasis more than I ever have before, but I don’t think my creativity is gone–I’m having too many ideas and thoughts and making too many notes–but I need to refocus it on writing actual words down, rather than just thinking about them. I also need to start reading again. I hate how far behind I’ve fallen on my reading.

I did start listening to podcasts yesterday in the car, which was really cool. I found one called Bad Gays, which is hosted by the author of the book Bad Gays and someone who works at the Gay Museum in Berlin (which, if we ever go to Germany, is something I’d like to see); and I listed to the episode on James I of England (VI of Scotland) and his male favorites. I didn’t see an episode on two historical figures I am fascinated by, Henri III of France, and Louis XIV’s brother, Philippe d’Orleans; Philippe’s lover the Chevalier de Lorraine was the definitive bad gay of Versailles. I should fictionalize the Affair of the Poisons…which would give me an excuse to visit France for research. Plus it’ll give me the excuse to study up on the period more, too. I love seventeenth century France.

I think I am going to watch Christopher and His Kind this weekend, and I may even rewatch Cabaret for good measure. I also found some other gay movies on-line to watch that I’ve never seen, like Another Country and Maurice. I also want to rewatch Saltburn so I can finish my entry on it.

And on that note, I am heading into the spice mines. May your Thursday be wonderful, cheery and bright, and I may be back later–one never knows.

  1. Hilariously, now that my anxiety is under control I’ve realized my hatred of driving and having to go places was always anxiety-based. 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.

Eyes of the World

Tuesday morning and feeling okay, I guess. Yesterday I had to do some incredibly tedious things at the office that literally made my eyes cross and completely exhausted me by the time I was finished, but the good news is that we got it done and praise the Lord and pass the ammunition, please. I cannot get over how tired I was yesterday afternoon, and I’d slept really well Sunday night, too. Go figure. My supervisor got me a cappuccino on her way back from going to the Office of Public Health to drop stuff off, which also could have been the reason I crashed so hard: the high from that caffeine rush was bound to wear off, and what better time than when going through endless forms looking for particular ones? Yeesh, that was exhausting. And of course after running errands on the way home, I was exhausted when I got home. I did some work on the book–very little–but my brain was essentially shut down and so I didn’t get very far, alas.

I was also too tired to read much when I repaired to my easy chair, so I read another chapter of ‘salem’s Lot, which also wasn’t easy given how tired my brain was. Paul worked at home yesterday, so he came down earlier than usual and we finished watching Diary of a Gigolo, which had a very interesting end. I think tonight we’ll probably move on to a A Friend of the Family, another series that shows how wretched the 1970’s kind of were.

I also had the great good fortune to be interviewed by Sisters in Crime Executive Director Julie Hennrikus for the Sisters podcast; it was a lot of fun but I don’t remember much of what we talked about, but you can certainly listen to it here, or wherever you download your podcasts! I’ve been doing the rounds of podcasts lately, which has been kind of fun and interesting–certainly more so than I usually do, which is practically never–and I’ve never quite grasped the whole podcast thing. I know people listen to them all the time (my supervisor listens to them on the way to work) but I don’t know if I will ever listen to one that I have been on–I really do hate the sound of my own voice, which is something else that should be unpacked in therapy–and maybe someday I’ll explore the world of podcasts more (it’s just one more version of technology I neither understand or comprehend and I really don’t want to learn more, you know what I mean?) but as always, when I have more time.

Constant Reader, I don’t think I will ever have more time…

But I did get some things done yesterday, which is a good thing–even if they were miniscule and not really helpful in the overall picture of how much I have to get done. But progress is progress, and getting rid of the little things can sometimes help in the overall context of getting everything done. The month continues to slip through my fingers and I keep hoping against hope I’ll have one of those great writing days where I write like a gazillion words so the book gets back on track. Ha ha ha ha, as if. But maybe today will be that day when it all clicks into place and the writing gets easier, as opposed to the tooth pulling it’s been like since I started writing this damned thing.

One thing I was noting when I was reading a chapter of ‘salem’s Lot was that this was one of the first times I remember reading about a main character who was a writer–I think this was before I read Youngblood Hawke–and I remember, as someone who didn’t know how to type properly, being amazed that Ben Mears not only was a writer but he wrote at his typewriter. This boggled my mind completely. My parents never let me take Typing in high school (even though I wanted to) because it was a class for, ahem, “girls” (yes, Virginia, I grew up in a time when high school classes other than Gym were gendered), like Home Ec, and it was also not seen as a “challenging” enough class that would help prepare me for college. (The irony that every paper I had to do in college needed to be typed did not escape me.) I tried writing at my typewriter a few times throughout the 1980’s, but it never really worked for me…it wasn’t until I started using a word processing program on the computer at one of my part time jobs that I actually started writing at a keyboard. I actually bought a word processor from Sears in 1991, and have used some sort of computer to write on ever since. It’s also interesting to me that authors used to write on typewriters and books used to be significantly longer. I already mentioned the expansive word count on this book–and imagining that King wrote the entire thing on a typewriter?

I really should stop complaining about writing, shouldn’t I? Or whenever I do, I should remind myself now imagine doing this on a typewriter and that would be the end of that.

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

Angel of the Morning

Tuesday morning and we here in New Orleans are in the midst of a heat wave of sorts; I gather from my social media accounts that it’s pretty widespread nationally. It’s often difficult to tell here whether this year is hotter than previous years; it’s always, to borrow a lovely phrase from the Brits, bloody hot here in the summer (technically, it’s not even summer yet–not until June 20th–but summer always seems to arrive in New Orleans around Mother’s Day in May; which is also when the termites start swarming) and one always questions one’s self as the heat descends upon us in all its blazing fury: was it this hot last summer? Surely I would remember, wouldn’t I?

Ah, the joys of selective memory. Again, why I will never write a memoir.

I slept very well last night, but was yet again plagued with some seriously bizarre and strange dreams; which is becoming a nightly occurrence. I don’t remember said dreams this morning, which is more normal than those from the previous two nights–which I did remember; but I remember having them, which is also not ordinary for me. I o feel rested–although I would have gladly slept the rest of the day away. Last night after work I also was interviewed by Eric Beetner for his Writer Types podcast; although I guess the correct way of saying that is that I was a guest on a taping of a future podcast, along with the always delightful Dharma Kelleher. (She and I are also going a ZOOM-type panel tonight for the San Francisco Public Library, moderated by my personal hero, Michael Nava, along with fellow panelists Cheryl Head and PJ Vernon, whose Bath Haus is releasing today; my copy should be delivered sometime today and YAY!) Doing those sort of things is always draining for me, and of course, with the time differential, this will be wrapping up tonight past my bedtime, which may mean I am not at my best as I will undoubtedly be drooping–but Cheryl is on EST, so it’s even later for her, so I need to fasten my seatbelt, sit up straight and participate. I just figure it means I will sleep even better tonight than I did last, frankly.

Today looks to be another hot one–but we’re getting thunderstorms later this week, so that might bring the heat down a little bit. When I went out to get into my car after work yesterday, it was literally like opening the oven door. I reached in, put the keys in the ignition and started the engine, reaching down to turn up the a./c, waiting for a bit before getting inside–but even then, the steering wheel was too hot to touch and the seat belt buckle was also pretty rough and nasty. I think I need to have my windshield tinted at some point–the direct bright sunlight can’t be good for the dashboard, and it’s certainly not good for me, personally.

I also intended to write some more on “Festival of the Redeemer” last night, but by the time the podcast was over–always a delight; I really enjoy Eric Beetner a lot, and Dharma is always lovely to talk books with–I was tired. I was already tired before signing into the podcast–spotty sleep Sunday night–and the drive home included a stop for groceries and the heat is so draining…I was worried I’d be deadly dull, and am not entirely sure I wasn’t anyway. But when we were finished, I needed to do some dishes and laundry before finally plopping down into my easy chair. I do need to get back to writing it, though–maybe tonight, since the panel is so late for me, I can do some since I won’t be able to get sucked into the television, watching something. I was going to go to the gym, and then rethought that–heat, lifting weights, losing lots of fluids; probably not the best idea and I can always go tomorrow night after work–so yeah, getting some things done and some writing under my belt is probably the best way to go with that.

We watched the first episode of Loki last night, and I wasn’t really impressed with it. Tom Hiddleston, of course, is always wonderful, and I think the premise might be interesting, but it just seemed like a lot of set-up was being done and there was a lot of backstory being recapped to set the series up, so for me, it wasn’t terribly involving. It wasn’t terrible by any means, so I will keep watching–I always try to give a show a few episodes before abandoning it entirely–but I found myself more than a little disappointed, and my mind wandered a lot.

This next scene I am writing for “Festival of the Redeemer” is also a rather hard one to write, in which a lot of complex feelings must be dealt with, as well as the deteriorating relationship between the two main characters, while they are having a lovely, romantic dinner at a restaurant on top of a hotel along the Grand Canal with a magnificent sunset view of the Serenissima; and it occurs to me that’s why I’ve been hedging about writing it, frankly–which is dumb (and I do this all the time; a scene or chapter that’s going to be difficult so I delay writing it because I forget it can always be revised, rewritten and edited BECAUSE I AM A MORON!).

And on that note– calling myself a moron is always a lovely spot to stop–I am heading into the spice mines. Have a lovely Tuesday, Constant Reader!

Love on the Rocks

Yesterday was kind of lovely, actually.

I got up early because of that weird stress-inducing dream I’d had, and then spent the morning doing things–organizing the kitchen, doing some laundry, taking out trash, vacuuming (God, what a difference a good vacuum cleaner can make; I am so glad I bit the bullet and spent the money on a good one Saturday–and I am reading the manual AND will be taking care of this one, to make it last), and yes–I actually spent some time writing “Festival of the Redeemer,” which was lovely. I am actually enjoying writing this novella or whatever it is going to be–I can’t get it out of my head, so I keep writing on it, even though I should be working on other things, but there’s no deadline for anything and so why not while I wait for my edits on the two manuscripts I turned in? I am trying for a Daphne du Maurier Gothic style, but am trying very hard not to reread “Don’t Look Now” or “Ganymede”–her two Venice stories, much as I desperately want to because I don’t want it to be derivative; I really like the voice, and I like my untrustworthy narrator a lot. (oops, shouldn’t have said that, I suppose) It’s also interesting writing about a dysfunctional couple, one where there is an enormous power differential as well as an undefined relationship; which helps keep my main character off-balance–he wants to know but then he’s afraid to have that conversation because he is afraid of the answer–and while I know how I want this story to end, I am finding my way there slowly; I am just writing in free form without any real sense of what I am writing and where it is going and you know, just seeing where it is going to wind up as I keep writing. I’m not writing at the pace I generally do–but I am writing, which is kind of nice, and there is an element where I kind of want to get this finished instead of putting it aside; I kind of want to finish something since I’ve had so many false starts since turning in the Kansas book. (I’ve also had a few more ideas while working on this, but am just writing notes and coming back to this.)

We had quite a marvelous thunderstorm last night–which was undoubtedly why it was so oppressively humid yesterday; I think I must have sweated out ten pounds of water walking to and from the gym. Oh yes, I made it to the gym again yesterday and the stretching and weight lifting felt absolutely marvelous. I was actually a little surprised that my flexibility gains hadn’t been lost during the fallow weeks of not going, and as the summer continues to get hotter and more humid daily, there will undoubtedly be days when I won’t want to go. But I also need to remember how good I feel during and after–especially the next morning. I also took a lot of pictures on the walk home for Instagram, which I am really starting to enjoy doing. I don’t know why I never really got into Instagram before, but since I love to take pictures and I live in one of the most beautiful–if not the most beautiful–cities in North America…it seems like it’s only natural that I bring them all together into one user app. I’ve talked about how I’ve felt sort of disconnected from New Orleans for a while now–several years at least; I feel like I’m no longer as familiar with the city as I used to be; the changes and gentrification plus all the working I’ve been doing in the years since Katrina have somehow weakened or lost my connection to the city. Yesterday, walking home and detouring a bit around Coliseum Square, I felt connected to the city again in a way I hadn’t in a long time. I also took and posted a picture of the house where Paul and I first lived when we moved here in 1996; the house, in fact, where Chanse MacLeod lives and runs his business from…we were living there when I wrote Murder in the Rue Dauphine, in fact…and I started remembering things from when we lived there and were new to the city. This is a good thing, making me feel anchored and tethered to the city again, and if I am going to write another Scotty book–well, the strength of my books set in New Orleans is that sense of love for the city I always feel and try to get across in the work.

I also had weird dreams last night. I rested well, but drifted in and out of sleep most of the night. I’m not sure what the deal is with the dreams; I dreamt that someone I went to high school with in the Chicago suburbs came to New Orleans with some of her friends from her current life and wanted to connect again; and I did so, primarily out of curiosity other than anything else. (Maybe it was all the tourists I saw out and about yesterday?) But it was very strange–going to the casino and watching them drink the insane tourist-targeted colored drinks; meeting them at their hotel on the West Bank, listening to them talk about New Orleans to me in the insane and often offensive ways tourists will speak to locals about the place where we live, not even realizing they are being insulting and offensive. I don’t know; I cannot say for certain what is the deal with the weird dreams lately, but I’ve been having them.

We rewatched Victor/Victoria last night–we’ve been talking about rewatching it for a while now, and it recently was added to HBO MAX. I don’t remember what brought it up, or what made us think about it–I know it was Paul who did; I had already added it to my watchlist when it dropped and when he said he wanted to watch it again, I replied, “Its on the HBO app so we can, whenever we want to” and so last night we did–primarily to see if it still worked, if it was still funny, and watching it–a relatively tame movie, really–last night I remembered (rather, we remembered) how incredibly subversive it was at the time it was released in 1982; it depicted homosexuality and drag in a nonjudgmental way years before being gay was less offensive to society at large, as well as bringing drag into the mainstream years before RuPaul’s Drag Race. The performances are stellar–especially Robert Preston and Lesley Anne Warren in supporting roles–and the humor is kind of farcical and slapstick, which never really ages; as Paul said, “that kind of humor is kind of timeless.” It also struck me that it was very Pink Panther-like; the film, not the cartoon–which makes sense since Blake Edwards wrote, directed and produced both. Some of it wouldn’t play today, of course, and the movie probably couldn’t be made today–some of the sex humor was misogynistic, not to mention men trying to spy on “Victor” to find out if he was really a man or a woman, which is incredibly invasive and horrible, plus it was very binary about gender and gender roles. 1982 was also the year of Tootsie, which I also kind of want to rewatch now to see how it holds up as well. It would seem that both films–which were both critical and box office hits , rewarded with scores of Oscar nominations–seemed to signal a new direction for Hollywood when it came to queerness and gender; it was also around this time that the soapy Making Love was released as well. but HIV/AIDS was breaking around this time as well, and soon the repressive politics of the 1980’s would change everything.

Tonight after work I am going to run some errands and then I am going to be guesting on Eric Beetner’s podcast, along with Dharma Kelleher, to talk about three queer writers everyone should be reading year-round, not just during Pride Month. That should be interesting; I am also appearing on a panel for the San Francisco Public Library tomorrow night being moderated by Michael Nava–one of my heroes–which should also be interesting and fun.

And on that note, it is time to go back to the spice mines. Have a lovely Monday, Constant Reader.

Hocus Pocus

Tuesday morning, and I somehow managed to survive yesterday. Sunday night’s sleep wasn’t terrific, and by the late afternoon I was plenty exhausted and tired. I had to persevere, and what’s more, I was interviewed for a podcast last night when I got home from the office. Somehow I managed to get through that, and within half an hour of disconnecting from Skype, I was in bed and asleep within moments. Last night’s sleep was quite lovely–I feel amazingly rested this morning–and so this day might not be as terrible as the previous.

Today is going to be a good day.

I started writing two new short stories yesterday, “The Spirit Tree” and “Moist Money.” “Moist Money” is for an anthology I was asked to write a story for; it finally came to me sometime either Sunday evening or sometime during the day yesterday, and I scribbled down the first two paragraphs in my journal, which I transcribed yesterday, and then added another couple of hundred words. “The Spirit Tree” was inspired by moving books around on Sunday, and one of them–a nonfiction book about snake-handling churches in southern Appalachia–I opened the cover and looked over the first page–which was about “spirit trees”; trees that rural Appalachian folk, superstitious and religious as they are, create to keep bad spirits away. What they do is put glass bottles on tree branches, so the bottles clink together in the wind (“warriors, come out and play”) and the sound the glass tinkling against other glass makes supposedly scares away evil spirits and keeps them from infesting the house. I hadn’t thought about spirit trees since I was a child, and I thought, not only is that a great title, I can actually think of a rural noir story to write that matches it. Yesterday I got down about five to six hundred words of the opening; this is a story, I think, I might try to sell to Ellery Queen or Alfred Hitchcock when finished. I was too tired to do much more than write the openings of both stories last night; but I am hoping to get more written on them this week. I also need to get those three chapters of Bury Me in Shadows written, so it can sit and percolate for the next couple of months until I can get back to it.

It’s also weird to think Royal Street Reveillon will be out into the world next month. It seemed like it took me forever to write that book, and I guess it kind of did? But it’s nice; I’m glad to be putting another Scotty out there into the world, and I’m also not sure when I’m going to write the next one. I already know what it’s going to be–Hollywood South Hustle–but I’m just not sure when I’m going to get to it. I want to, as I have said in previous blogs, get all these books about teenagers I’m in some stage of writing cleared off my plate and out into the world before I start writing anything else–a cleansed palate, as it were–and keep writing my short stories and essays along with writing those. I’d love to get my second short story collection out into the world by 2021–that would be the one I’m calling Once a Tiger and Other Stories–and I also want to get “Never Kiss a Stranger,” a novella, finished sometime before the end of the year, as well as “Fireflies,” my horror novella, as well.

So much to do, right? And I really need to proof Jackson Square Jazz so the ebook can finally go up for sale again. Maybe I can make that a goal of my long weekend for my birthday? Stranger things have happened. I really need to get all these things that are hanging over my head finished and out of the way, so I can focus more easily on writing Chlorine next year.

And on that note, I am heading back into the spice mines. Have a lovely Tuesday, Constant Reader.

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Slow Ride

Well, I finally finished that fucking Chapter Fourteen, and yes, it’s rough, but it’s not nearly as bad as I feared it would turn out, nor as it was heading last week when I tried to work on it. Today I figured out a way to plough through it, and now I have to figure out how the fuck I am going to get another eleven chapters out of this story–but truth be told, the elements of the plot are pretty much all in place now and now it’s a matter of playing them out. I also recognized that there’s not an emotional stability at the core of the story–there is, I just haven’t been putting it in, so that’s the next thing I need to do in the next draft, or as this one progresses along I can start putting it in.

I keep saying to myself that someday this will get easier, but thirty-odd books later and here I still am, plodding through a manuscript and ready to throw in the goddamned towel.

Sunday morning and I’m on my second cup of coffee. My kitchen is a mess, and I have to figure out how to use a new app on my computer because I’m being interviewed by Eric Beetner and S. W. Lauden for their Writer Types podcast, which is very cool. I was briefly on it when they were interviewing people in the bar at St. Petersburg Bouchercon, but that was also the now notorious Low ‘n’ Slow afternoon, so I only vaguely remember it and still to this day have no idea what I actually said to them. Not good, really, when it’s going to be broadcast. I think I listened to it, and I didn’t embarrass myself too badly; but I’ve been told any number of times that people can’t tell when I’m wasted.

I’ve always thought they were being kind to lessen my own embarrassment. Maybe they were, who knows?

My relationship with alcohol has always been a tricky one. I only had liquor once before I graduated from high school and I got very drunk at a friend’s birthday party my junior year. I didn’t drink again until the night I graduated, and after I recovered from that horrible hangover I pretty much was drunk every night until we moved to California, where the drinking age was 21 and I was still only nineteen. California was also a lot stricter about checking ID’s than Kansas had ever been, so I was totally sober for two years before I came of legal age to drink again….and then was drunk every night for the next six or seven years again, followed by another few years of utter sobriety, and then when I started going out to gay bars, I still remained sober most of the time, drinking only water and finally, gradually, progressing back to beer again. I don’t drink much anymore–there were many years of New Orleans life where Paul and I went out every weekend night, including Sunday Tea Dance–but since I hung up my dancing shoes, I don’t really drink hardly at all anymore. I’ll have a drink or two when I’m out for dinner, or at a party, or during a conference–I am usually wasted every night at Bouchercon–but once the conference is over, I come back home to sobriety. We generally don’t drink at home–I still have a bottle of wine I bought on the notorious Target expedition with Wendy Corsi Staub in St. Petersburg–and we still have bottles of vodka and gin and tequila left over from the Iris parties of old; and we haven’t had an Iris party in about five years or so.

Although I am sure this October in Dallas there will be drunken, sloppy tales of Gregalicious to tell.

I’m probably going to try to get some writing done after the interview, and some cleaning, and I’d like to read more of Black Diamond Fall. I’m not reading as quickly as I used to, and I am sure it has something to do with social media and they need to constantly be checking it–which is a need that absolutely positively has to be reined in because it’s such a waste of time.

And that sounds like the perfect segue back into the spice mines this morning. Have a lovely Sunday, Constant Reader.

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