Tag: Richard Madden

I Go To Pieces

Sunday morning and I hope it finds you doing well, Constant Reader. It’s kind of gray outside my windows this morning, and it’s raining, off and on; not a gully-washer like the occasional tropical downpours we get on occasion, but enough so that everything outside is wet and glistening. It’s supposed to be lovely today, but the temperature is dropping overnight and it’s going to be in the bitterly cold thirties the rest of the week. Yay, but this too shall pass. Tomorrow is Twelfth Night and the official beginning of Carnival; so on my way home tomorrow night I’ll stop and get our first King cake of the 2025 season. Yay, king cake! We are both fans. Paul picked up this year’s copy of Arthur Hardy’s Mardi Gras Guide, a staple of the season. We’ve bought a copy every year we’ve lived here, and while the “parade watcher” app makes parade-going much easier, it’s also nice to have around.

What are we going to do when we lose Arthur Hardy? I don’t even want to think about it.

I have a lot to get done today. I did work some yesterday but not much; I was kind of tired after going to the gym (yay!) and making groceries, so I just kind of collapsed into my easy chair after putting the groceries away and just relaxed. I did finish reading Winter Counts (more on that later) which I enjoyed, and started reading my next read, Ode to Billy Joe by Herman Raucher. Last spring–and I don’t know why–I remembered Summer of ’42, the novel by Herman Raucher that was made into a film in the early 1970’s. I enjoyed both book and movie; it’s very poignant and sweet, and I later made the connection when I was writing my post about Robby Benson and my crush on him when I was a young gay…and then remembered he’d been in the film version of Ode to Billy Joe, which sent me down a rabbit hole–the song, the book, the movie–which is an interesting journey. I wound up ordering a copy of the novel from a second-hand book website, and so I started reading it finally. It’s weird; it was originally a haunting story song hit for Bobbie Gentry, and they decided to make a movie of it. They hired Raucher to adapt the song into a screenplay, and he went one better–not only writing the screenplay but writing a novel as well. So, is it a novelization of a movie, or a novelization of a song that became a movie? It’s actually very well written; the movie was dated and I didn’t enjoy my rewatch a few years ago, but the book still holds up. I also decided yesterday that I am going to alternate crime fiction with another genre or style of fiction, to broaden my scope and better inform my own writing.

I slept well last night, even if it took me longer to fall asleep than usual, which was odd. I wasn’t nearly as tired as I usually am when I went to bed, but I did drag my ass out of bed this morning. Sparky didn’t let me sleep late this morning–later than my usual, but far earlier than the last two mornings–so hopefully I’ll feel tired tonight. I made it to the gym yesterday, and so am a bit tight and sore this morning, but at the same time I am very pleased I did go. I tried to talk myself into waiting till today, but finally around one I snapped out of it and went. The one thing I’ve noticed besides the muscle fatigue is that mu shoulder is a lot looser and freer now–it’s been tight for a while, and sometimes it felt like it needed to, I don’t know, pop? Like a knuckle that won’t crack? But since I started working out again (granted, only twice but that’s also two more times than if I hadn’t, so there), it feels a lot better and more usable than before. Yay! Should have never stopped going last spring, but if wishes were horses and all that nonsense. Even the tightness of the other muscle groups feels kind of good. Now, if I can just remember to find time to stretch every day…

The weekend hasn’t been a waste for writing, either. I reread some works in progress, worked a bit on the synopsis of The Summer of Lost Boys, and reread Chapter 2 of new Scotty preparatory to revising it this morning. I have some short stories to work on and more to read–Saints and Sinners short story contest judging work–so I may not have as much time today to read for fun as I might want, but I think I can get through Ode to Billy Joe this week before moving on to my next read, which will be a crime novel from a marginalized author.

We finished watching Cross yesterday, and I have to admit we enjoyed it more than I thought I would. I’m not sure what I was expecting, but the show turned out to be a lot better than I was expecting. Shows produced by streaming services can often be hit-or-miss, and other than The Boys I generally don’t go into Prime shows with a lot of expectations. I think Cross could have been six episodes instead of eight, but they did an excellent job of juggling different crime storylines against each other as well as making the viewer wonder if it was two different cases or the same one. That’s not easy to do, and is even harder for a television series to pull off than a book. We then watched a really fun crime show called Killer Heat, which was a modern take on film noir/hard boiled private eye stories. Starring Joseph Gordon Leavitt (whom I will watch in anything), Richard Madden, and Shailene Woodley, it’s done very well and is quite fun to watch until they don’t quite nail the landing, but hey–it was an excellent attempt, and they got everything right–including excellent performances from the two main leads (Richard Madden was kind of wasted in the role of identical twin billionaires, one of whom’s murder opens the movie; the part wasn’t well written and any hot actor with a good body could have done the job)–and we definitely enjoyed it.

And on that note, I am heading into the spice mines. Have a lovely Sunday, and I may be back later. One can never be entirely certain, can one?

Would I Lie To You

Wednesday.

I’ve not been sleeping well for the last two nights; I’ve woken up after sleeping for a couple of hours and then been kind of half-asleep the rest of the night. Relaxed, resting, but not fully asleep. I’m not sure why this sudden change, especially after getting an amazing night’s sleep Saturday night, but there you have it.

I started working on Bury Me in Satin last night again, in an attempt to get past the stress and tension of election night. I am very pleased this morning to see that Louisiana passed the initiative to require unanimous verdicts in criminal trials; finally, that hideous Jim Crow law is off our books. I wasn’t able to concentrate fully on the writing, though, and eventually took to watching reruns of Jeopardy on Netflix, which is a lot more binge-addicting than you might think. Before I knew it, Paul was home and I’d burned through about five episodes–but it’s nice to know I can have that on now in the background as I do chores or read or make writing notes.

Once Paul was home, we watched the final episode of Bodyguard, a BBC political/suspense thriller starring Richard Madden (aka Robb Stark from Game of Thrones). It’s quite good, very twisty, and incredibly nerve-wracking; I do highly recommend the show. Madden, who is also very pretty, has been mentioned lately as a contender for taking over James Bond. I’ve not really seen it, to be honest; he was good (if annoying) on Game of Thrones (not his fault; the character, really) and he was good in Medici Masters of Florence, but I just didn’t see him as Bond. After watching Bodyguard, I can actually see it; he would be a very good choice (if we can’t have Idris Elba).

Our office moved this week; today I am working out of the main office, and then it’s back to the new building tomorrow and possibly Friday. I am not sure; I may have to go to the main office to help them pack up on Friday, as the rest of our department is moving over to the new building next Monday. The new building, on Elysian Fields past Claiborne on the UNO side, is quite nice and lovely. Lots of unpacking and setting up remain to be done; we are going to be operational and seeing clients apparently next week. I do miss the client contact, quite frankly; it’ll be nice to start seeing clients and getting used to the new work space.

And I am hopeful work on the novel will continue to go smoothly. The second chapter is my bane, a transitional chapter, which means it will seem odious and take me forever to slog through writing it. But I am excited to be finally writing this book, having thought about it forever–it started as a short story called “Ruins” that I wrote in the 1980’s, and while I like Ruins as a title, there’s a rather famous Scott Smith novel called The Ruins, and so I am not quite certain calling this one that is a good idea. I do like Bury Me in Satin as a title, and I am going to be trying to figure out my complicated plot a bit this weekend after I get deeper into the manuscript.

It’s probably the most complicated plot of a young adult novel that I’ve written, but I like my main character, Jake Chapman, a lot. He’s smart smart smart, and I like the idea behind the concept of the book. It remains, however, to be seen whether I can actually pull it off. We shall see.

And now, back to the spice mines.

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Walk a Thin Line

Yesterday morning it was cold for here; it was only forty degrees out when I got out of bed and lumbered downstairs. It was even colder inside that it was outside–the joy of old New Orleans homes, built to be cooler inside than out–and sat here shivering at my desk trying to get some work done. It wasn’t easy and I was so cold, so cold that I decided when out running errands to buy gloves in order to cut off their fingers so I could type with them on so it wouldn’t be an issue. It wasn’t, of course, until later that I remembered I had a space heater in the closet upstairs, which I brought downstairs and set up. It’s not as cold this morning as it was yesterday, but I do have it on and I am relatively comfortable in here. This is a good sign. I didn’t get as much writing done yesterday as I’d intended; I have to write at least two chapters and revise two short stories this weekend–so of course, I started writing an entirely different short story yesterday, and one I don’t have a market for.

Heavy heaving sigh. Isn’t that always the way?

Ah, well. It’s an idea I had actually a really long time ago, and something I saw on Facebook reminded me of it, and so I actually started writing it. I’d forgotten the idea, quite frankly, hadn’t made any notes or anything, and it is a good idea, so I thought it better not to forget about it a second time so I took some action and wrote the opening. I also don’t know how to end it, either, so I am not going to try to write any more of it; rather, I’ll just print what I had and write out some notes and create a folder for it so it’s there when I want to get back to it. Which is what I usually do. Which is why I have a million folders everywhere.

We are still watching Ray Donovan, but I also discovered a new series on Netflix last night, Medici: Masters of Florence, which I of course wanted to start watching. Paul’s not into it as much as I am, of course, but he’s also going to visit his mother this coming weekend so I will have plenty of time to watch it while he’s gone. It’s focused on Cosimo de Medici (I love me some Medicis), and the building of Il Duomo. It’s lavishly and expensively shot–they’ve spared little to no expense–and the lead actor is the guy who played Robb Stark on Game of Thrones, Richard Madden, who is quite lovely to look at.

Those eyes!

The story flashes back and forth between the time when Cosimo is a young man with aspirations of being an artist, and forced into the world of banking and power by his father, Giovanni (played by Dustin Hoffman)–who dies of poison at the opening of the first episode. The present day is 1429, so the ‘past’ is 1409. Giovanni is the one who started the bank and founded the dynasty; Cosimo took it much higher–Cosimo’s grandson laid the groundwork for two Medici popes and, in time, two Medici queens of France. (The Medici eventually reached noble status, and eventually royal. Not bad for a family of bankers.) The Medici are fascinating, of course, and watching the episodes we did see made me, of course, long for Italy. (Next year’s Bouchercon anthology is themed Passport to Murder; I have some ideas for stories set in Italy, which is kind of exciting for me. And of course, there’s an Italian novel I want to write–not in Italian, set in Italy, of course.)

I am also still reading and enjoying Nick Mamatas’ I Am Providence, which is really hitting its stride nicely. I am not sure what I intend to read when I finish it; there are some lovely horror novels in my TBR pile, but then again, every book on my TBR pile looks lovely.

Heavy heaving sigh.