Tag: romance

Turtles All The Way Down

Thursday and my last day in the office for the week. I also only have to work Monday and Tuesday of next week, so I pretty much have a rather lengthy vacation with a two-day work break. Yay! It’ll be nice to relax and recharge and hang out with the boys and make progress on everything, sleep as late as Sparky will let me…woo-hoo!

Yesterday was a busy day in the clinic–the afternoon, at any rate–but I stayed on top of most everything somehow. Today should be somewhat easier, and I can get caught up on the few things I am behind on (mostly Admin work, processing paperwork from yesterday) before the stay-at-home day and my weekend. I feel pretty good this morning (more sleep would be lovely, but isn’t necessary) and am in a pretty decent mood. I didn’t do a lot yesterday when I got home from work; I went uptown to get the mail after work, which was an adventure because I left the office late. Got some Christmas cards (apologies again, everyone) in the mail, and my Anthropic settlement information. I watched The Real Housewives of Salt Lake City–which was a rather silly episode, but quite fun. I caught up on the news, refused to watch whatever speech that was that aired last night (and from what I am seeing this morning, I didn’t miss anything; so to me at least, it seems like it was nothing more than a distraction from the Vanity Fair disaster and all the other disasters rooted in this administration1), and then did some light picking up and filing before going to bed. I feel rested and good, miraculous for a Thursday, and cannot believe Christmas is a week from today. It was dark when I went uptown last night, and on my way home from Uptown last night I saw a lot of decorated houses, which kind of made me feel Christmasy. We’re getting a new television from Costco as a Christmas gift to ourselves. I don’t feel like we really need a new one, honestly, but the one we have is over ten years old, and Paul has been hankering for a new television, for reasons unknown to me, for several months now. I bought our current one at Target on the West Bank as a Christmas gift for the apartment all those long years ago. I don’t really care about gifts anymore, which has been a conundrum these last years because we don’t really need anything, so we’ve kind of abandoned birthday and Christmas presents. We usually, for example, get Chinese food for our birthdays as a treat, or a pizza from a place that’s inconvenient to go to.

I am hoping to get a couple of newsletters done over the weekend and set to post over a week or so; I need to finish my essays on Laurie R. King’s O Jerusalem, The Princess Bride, and General Hospital, and I have a new essay series I am planning, about my lifelong obsession with all things ancient Egyptian; which will be a lot of fun to write, methinks2. I also need to finish reading The Postman Always Rings Twice, and start my next read over this weekend as well (it’s looking like a toss-up between a Dorothy B. Hughes classic and the latest Eli Cranor). There’s absolutely no reason I can’t get a lot of reading and writing done over the holiday break, as well as cleaning and organizing with plenty of time to be lazy and relax. Staycations are kind of nice, actually. I also don’t think the clinic is busy next week, either; but after New Year’s, YIKES.

I didn’t watch this week’s new episode of Heated Rivalry, but I did see that Netflix canceled Boots, in what can only be seen as a capitulation of the company to the Pentagon, because the Secretary of Alcoholism didn’t think it “properly depicted the Warrior Ethos of the military.” I’d like to see that drunk rapist adulterous piece of shit make it through Boot Camp, and based on every piece of video evidence I’ve seen, that piece of shit can’t even do a pull-up properly. Such a masculine stud! Netflix also wants to acquire Warner Brothers, so they’re dancing around the Administration’s whining bitch-ass complaints. Leavenworth is too good for this piece of shit’s war crimes, and I also think he should be turned over to the Hague. Anyway, I digressed away from the point (because that piece of shit makes my blood boil), which was that a co-worker asked me in the elevator the other morning if I “wrote m/m romance under a different name.” I was a bit taken aback at first, but I just replied no, but kept thinking about it the rest of the day, and it’s popped back into my head any number of times since then.

I’ve not written anything that could be strictly considered romance other than a couple of short stories here and there over the years. I don’t read much romance–my supervisor loaned me an m/m romance novel last year that I still haven’t read, but writing gay romance (or “m/m”, whatever; but there are distinctions) is something that has occurred to me over the years. I do have several ideas for them, but they’re more romantic stories than actually romance. It would be a challenge, I think, but I love challenges and pushing myself to try to write new things I’ve not done before. I do need to read more romances, though, in order to really write a good one. Ever since Charles (shout out to Charles Click!) mentioned this to me the other morning, a sports one has kind of started taking shape in my head–partly because I already wrote an erotic short story about an athlete (who wasn’t a wrestler, LOL) that could easily be adapted to a novel.

Something to think about, anyway. Maybe after Chlorine.

And on that note, I am heading into the spice mines. Have a lovely day, Constant Reader, and I’ll check back in with you again tomorrow! From my workspace at home between the windows!

  1. At least we’re not invading Venezuela…yet. Happy with what you voted for, MAGAts? ↩︎
  2. And it gives me the opportunity and excuse to watch The Mummy movies with Brendan Fraser and Rachel Weisz again. ↩︎

He’ll Have to Go

A gray Sunday morning in the Lost Apartment, with a lot of things to do this morning. I have some errands to run, some food to prepare, and proofing to do today before I rest my sleepy little head in my bed this evening. Sparky wasn’t having my “let me sleep” mentality this morning, but he didn’t get aggressively insistent until about seven, so it was fine. I feel pretty well rested this morning, too, which is very nice. Yesterday was a nice day. I didn’t get nearly as much done as I should have, but I don’t care nor do I mind. I did have the games on for most of the day, but not really watching. Texas Tech throttled BYU, and then Georgia embarrassed Alabama, which I did watch. I didn’t watch either of the evening games, but was delighted for Indiana and Duke. I don’t think anyone see either of them winning ahead of those games, and what lovely chaos yesterday’s results unleashed on the college football playoffs, and there will be lots of anger and arguments once the teams who made it are announced this Tuesday. Since LSU is out of it, I’d love to see either Indiana or Vanderbilt win it all…but Vanderbilt probably isn’t getting in. I don’t know how much attention I am going to pay to the playoffs to begin with–I didn’t watch hardly any of it last year.

We also got caught up on Heated Rivalry–I hadn’t known it wasn’t all available yet until last night–and I am reserving my commentary until we’ve finished watching the entire thing. I’m enjoying the ride thus far, and that’s saying something–Paul is loving it. I’m not a hockey fan, so that aspect of the show isn’t resonating with me. (My first major crush in high school was a hockey player; I should write about that someday, although I have numerous times in fiction.) The show is stirring up shit on social media, though–some of the criticisms the show is getting is wild. My personal favorite is “hockey players don’t look that hot”–yes, their faces were be beaten up a bit more and they’d be missing some teeth, for sure–but seriously, why is it so hard for people to grasp the concept that it’s a romance? Romances, film or television or book or short story, aren’t accurate depictions of anyone’s reality. I don’t know why it is so hard for people to grasp that (although, in fairness, I am guilty of it myself from time to time) important, salient fact–and that ignorance is often masked in condescension; which is highly ironic. Condescending to (and about) a genre that you don’t understand is hardly a sign of your intellectual superiority. All genres deserve respect from writers outside of that genre, period. You’re not writing The Great Gatsby1 yourself, asshole.

I also finished going through my journals looking for notes on Chlorine during the Alabama-Georgia game, which was a lot of fun. It also made me realize there’s really no need for me to keep my papers and try to donate them to an archive (Tulane’s library was interested for one of their special collections almost two decades ago, but I never bothered getting around to it because I really didn’t care that much); all they really need or would want would be my back-up hard drive and my journals. It was kind of fun going through them, and I should more often because there’s a lot of good stuff in there about plotting and character and editing ideas and so forth. There’s also a lot of good ideas and fragments in there, too. I started keeping a journal in the mid-90s, and kind of got away from that at some point after moving to New Orleans. I started up again on New Year’s, I think in 2016. Paul and I had our annual lunch at Commander’s Palace with Jean and Gillian, and on the way back to the car afterward we stopped at Garden District Bookshop specifically for me to buy a journal so I could start keeping one again. I have been pretty consistent ever since then, and they are a fun record to revisit periodically. (I have my old ones around here somewhere, but I can never remember where they are.) It also gave me the answer to a question that has puzzled and confused other authors almost as long as I have been publishing: how do you write so fast? I don’t write fast, I type fast. Books and stories have existed in the corners of my mind for years in some cases before I actually write them, and have made notes and developed characters and titles and plots over many years before I organize them all and sit down to actually write the book. I don’t execute a novel from idea to characters to plot to write the whole thing in three months or so; I spend three months organizing it all while typing it all out–and in some cases, I’ve even started one before getting stuck and putting it to the side. In most cases, I am finishing a book in three months. (I have several novels on hand that are in some stage of completion, and I don’t even want to know how many novellas, short stories, and essays there are in the files.) They were started and thought out a long time before I actually write them.

Today’s goals are to get my bills caught up on paid for, running my errands, and proofing the typeset pages of the new book. I am making chicken white bean chili today (which should be delicious), and want to get some filing and organizing done. I am also going to gather all the Chlorine notes scanned in to the computer so I can start organizing them and working on the book. I also realized yesterday, as I selected and picked out the “noir” I’m going to try to read this month (through Twelfth Night, for the record) and realized that what I have considered to be noir all these years…well, I was incorrect; I was conflating hard-boiled with noir, and while they are very close to being the same and have things in common, there are more than enough differences to be entirely separate sub-genres. A book doesn’t even have to be a crime novel to be noir. Maybe it’s something I should write about for the newsletter, you know?

And on that note, I am heading into the spice mines on this gray, chilly day. It did rain for most of the day yesterday, which made for a very cozy day in my easy chair with Sparky in my lap and a blanket. Have a lovely Sunday, Constant Reader, and I’ll be back tomorrow.

As you can see, I have unlocked my Christmas hunk folder for the year.
  1. I used this book–which I loathe–as an example, because it’s often considered one of the great American novels. ↩︎

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.

Screenshot

Mama Can’t Buy You Love

Ah, Wednesday and it’s all downhill for the rest of the week, isn’t it? Huzzah! I feel good this morning, too, more rested and alert than I have been for most of the week. So, this week feels back to normal in that weird way of feeling better later in the week as my body again resets to getting up early every day. I was fatigued again last night when I got home from work, but I wrote for a little while once I was home, and did some chores (the kitchen looks presentable again) before zoning out with The Real Housewives of Beverly Hills and the news last night. I also ran an errand after work, picking up my copy of Christa Faust’s The Get Off, the third and probably final book of the Angel Dare series. I loved the first two (Money Shot and Choke Hold), and nobody writes like Christa. If you’ve not read Christa, and love noir, you really can’t go wrong with reading this trilogy. It really is fantastic.

As a general rule, I simply watch the antics of “”book social media” from a removed, slightly bemused distance and don’t get involved, other than a comment about how jaw-droppingly insane the latest controversy on those sites are, and these controversies usually involve the actions of a problematic author and/or publisher. I have my thoughts and opinions about each and every topic in those hashtags and posts that grow heated (remember the fun days of American Dirt? Good times!) but I don’t contribute to them because I don’t see any point. Are there authors that write bigoted, uninformed work that is questionable at best and horrifying at its worst? Are there readers who will embrace those works because said stories confirm their prejudices and values? 100%. Are they all, authors and readers, awful people? Certainly. Will arguing with them on social media do anything other than raise my blood pressure and wreck my day? Not likely. Personally? I don’t want to ever unintentionally offend anyone (unless you’re MAGA, in which case you shouldn’t be reading my work in the first place because you are not my intended audience but if you are reading it, suck it up snowflakes, and fuck your feelings); and I constantly question my choices in my work. My go-to is always if I question it, best to remove it. (Sidebar: I bet the American Dirt author–Jeanine Cummins?– was really happy about the pandemic because it made everyone forget about her and her shitty racist book.) There have been some tempests in this week’s (and last’s) social media teapots1, haven’t there? Sheesh. There was an explosion (again) of homophobia in the m/m writing community, which got people riled up (I love when cishet straight white women inform gay men that books with two men falling in love aren’t for us.) There was another kerfuffle where a romance writer gave her main male character an HEA–just not with the female lead, but another man. Horrors! Needless to say, that also triggered an on-line meltdown, and I am reminded again why I never want to write romance…just like I eschew the y/a publishing community, which is also a snake pit.

I’d rather jump into a piranha-infested river, to be honest. Or be forced to be on a Kardashian television show.2

And yesterday, the “Tori Woods” groomer romance situation blew up on the Internet–and her book, about a “romance” that begins when an adult male is attracted to a three-year-old “but waits for her to grow-up so it’s not child sexual abuse”, is from the same publisher as the last author who wrote racist books and was “canceled” (whatever the fuck that means) deservedly for being a racist piece of shit. Sounds like a publisher issue to me, doesn’t it? I think the publisher has also published problematically racist books before, too. There was some historical romance writer who also outed herself as a racist pos–apparently, people of color only existed in the past to be enslaved or rescued by noble white people–and seriously, how did RWA take so long to burn to the ground in the first place?3

Don’t get me wrong; I still want to write a gay romance novel at some point–and maybe even more than one, honestly. But I’d really rather not get dragged into that on-line community, if I can. (I saw yesterday that someone is publishing a grooming romance–and the grooming started when the girl was THREE. Um…yeah, no thanks.) Did not trying to be a part of the on-line y/a community probably, possibly have cost me some sales? For sure, but at the same time I am really grateful to have my peace of mind.

Peace of mind is priceless.

I also got my assignments for Saints and Sinners/Tennessee Williams Fests, and I am going to be hopping all weekend, it looks like–panels, a tribute reading, the anthology launch–and I will have LOTS of friends in town, too. But this year I took Monday off, too, so I can recover from the weekend and get things done around the house. I’ll also be commuting back and forth so Sparky’s not alone for the whole weekend, and someone needs to feed him, anyway. He is not going to be happy. Paul went to the office yesterday and wasn’t home when I arrived, so Sparky was especially cuddly and needy. I don’t mind, but clearly he doesn’t like being left alone–or puts on a good show after he has been.

My Youtube algorithms, always an interesting mystery, have recently started showing me videos about the classic scifi television program V. I loved V when it originally aired, but when it became a regular weekly series in the 1980s, I stopped watching because I lost interest. I did love the rebooted series, which was fantastic and again ended on a great cliff-hanger. And of course, once I watched one video, it started showing me more. This of course is because I’ve been watching videos about the rise of fascism in Europe between 1918-1939, World War II, and the “America First” movement of that period (newsflash: conservatives were Nazi-adjacent until Pearl Harbor)…and that’s the allegory at play in the series–the Visitors are stand-ins for Nazis, etc. I had grown up believing that it could never happen here…but watching this show made me realize how incredibly easy it is for people to side with their oppressors. It’s something, sadly, that is very human. I also remember a school did a social experiment with fascism, which was made into a TV movie called The Wave, which was again the same thing–the way we can so easily slide into being “good Germans.” I read Sinclair Lewis’ It Can’t Happen Here during the reign of Bush II: Electric Boogaloo, which cemented it even further into my head. I’ve talked before about writing a book that I originally got the idea for in the 1990s, where the queers fill in for the scapegoated minority…interesting, though, that my video research into fascism triggered the algorithm to remind me of V, which was also probably, along with Red Dawn, the biggest influences on that idea.

And on that grim note, I am heading into the spice mines. Have a wonderful midweek Wednesday, and I’ll probably be back later or tomorrow.

  1. Although I am really hoping the move to cancel Kim Kardashian and her odious family really takes this time. ↩︎
  2. Please, God, let this be the end of all things Kardashian. Haven’t we suffered enough? ↩︎
  3. Racists working with a gay white man (racist) brought RWA down, remember? ↩︎

Surfin’ in a Hurricane

Scotty X.

The tenth Scotty book.

I cannot believe I am writing my tenth Scotty book–the series that wasn’t supposed to be a series, then turned into a trilogy, and here we are on the tenth volume. I started writing the first book when we moved back to New Orleans in August of 2001, and here I am, nearly twenty-four years later, writing another one. I never dreamed this series would last this long, would continue to draw readers (or keep the ones I had), and do so well for me. 1

I’ve told the story of how I came up with the idea for him many times before (sometimes I wonder how much that story has adapted and changed over the years), but basically I had the idea for the story of Bourbon Street Blues first; one year Paul and I had managed to get the prime balcony spots at the Parade to look out over the Southern Decadence crowd one afternoon and I saw one of the dancers from the night before trying to make his way through the crowd in his cut-off sweatpants and string-strapped tank top, carrying his bag of “dance wear,” and not having much luck, as he kept getting stopped and touched and flirted with when the poor guy was just trying to get to work. It was mildly amusing, and then I wondered about how hard it would be to try to get away from someone trying to harm you in such a crowd, and then it became about the dancer trying to get away from the crowd, and I actually scribbled it down on a cocktail napkin, which I put in my wallet and found, a few days later. I did open a document and type up the note and some other thoughts and ideas, but I never thought anything would ever come of “Decadence stripper thriller,” but it was always there in my files. Every so often I would come across it, and think, I really do need to do something with that. I had already written a short story called “Bourbon Street Blues,” which had nothing to do with the stripper (although it actually was the seed from which Death Drop sprouted from–so yes, the moral of this overarching story is never throw any ideas or thoughts away because they will come in handy someday.

And isn’t this cover magnificent?

Bold Strokes always does well by my covers.

This title was actually originally the title I was going to use for Scotty IV (which ultimately became Vieux Carré Voodoo)–only back then it was Hurricane Party Hustle, and it was supposed to be set during an evacuation; I wanted to do something Man in the Iron Mask-ish, with the boys being hired by a gay man who was disfigured by having acid thrown in his face, to find out where his attacker–scion of a wealthy and powerful local family–has escaped to, and if the family was lying about not having any contact with him–and the whole thing would take place during an evacuation for a hurricane that didn’t come here; which was my primary experience with hurricanes at the time, and I always thought it was kind of an interesting and surreal thing to experience. There would also not be a lot of cops around during that time, either, which could make it even more fun and interesting.

Scotty III was delayed for a year because of personal problems and issues, but I finally turned in Mardi Gras Mambo a year and four months late; I also included the proposal for the fourth book, Hurricane Party Hustle, which I intended to be Scotty’s last hurrah. I would tie up all the hanging threads from Scotty III and bring the series to its natural close, at which point I was going to do something different; I was also planning on ending the Chanse series after one more book. I decided I was going to go back to school and get my master’s in creative writing, and maybe even a PhD. I got all of that set into motion, but within a couple of weeks, Katrina came along and blew up the lives of everyone in its path, and obviously, I couldn’t write a hurricane book for Scotty after the catastrophic failure of the federally built and maintained levees. I certainly couldn’t write anything funny. After a few years had passed, I decided hurricanes were not something I should write about2, and came up with another idea for Scotty–the movie star lookalike book, which I thought could be absolutely hilarious. But time had passed, and the publisher didn’t think Scotty had an audience anymore, so they passed on it. (I eventually used that for a Chanse book, only he didn’t look like the movie star, it was someone else.)

And every time I finish writing a Scotty, I’m never sure if I am going to write another. I never say never to him, though, the way I did with Chanse; I’ll always write Scotty if there is a way to make it interesting for the readers and challenging for me. I don’t want to write them by rote (which is where I felt I was going with Chanse), and so, yeah, as long as fun ideas that are challenging keep coming to me, I’ll keep going. I never want to get bored writing him, you know what I mean? That’s just not any fun. I decided to write this one as a challenge to myself and I am having a lot of fun with it.

And I changed the title from party to season; and have it take place during an actual hurricane in the city. Party just seemed too frivolous, and I don’t to give anyone that wrong idea.

I’ll let you know when it’s up for preorder, Constant Reader, and thank you for always reading him.

  1. I also just remembered that my first friend, as a child, was named Scotty. Interesting. He was the first friend, come to think of it, who decided not to be my friend one day and never spoke to me again without me ever knowing why. Hmmm. ↩︎
  2. I dealt with Katrina and its aftermath, as well as another hurricane evacuation, in the Chanse series, which I did finally end in the teens. ↩︎

Count Me In

Work at home Friday! I have to go have blood work done at noon, so I am going to do my errands then–get the mail, hit the grocery store, wash and clean out the car–before coming back home to finish my work-at-home duties for the day. It shouldn’t take long, methinks; Wednesday night I managed to do my errands and make groceries in under an hour after I got off work. I left the office that night just after five, and figured it would take me about two hours to do everything and get home. I walked into the apartment at six, which was pretty impressive efficiency. Well, I was impressed.

I was tired yesterday when I got off work, but had committed to the party so when I left the office, dragging and really just wanting to hang out in my chair with Sparky, I forced myself to get up and go get cleaned up and ready. I always dread these things, always, but inevitably always have a good time once I actually am there. I hate getting ready and getting there, in all honesty. I did some chores before I left the apartment, and Sparky got some sleepy time in my lap before I got ready. But sadly I was dragging a bit, and knew I wouldn’t last long once I got to the party. I haven’t left the house at night in the car to go anywhere in a very long time, and I did go to the Marigny the way I always used to (side note: while I often regret and miss our old office on Frenchmen Street, taking the way I always used to go to work made me very glad I no longer work on Frenchmen and have to deal with negotiating the CBD and the Quarter every evening to come home)–yeesh, what a horror it was driving–so much so that when I came home I went to Claiborne and got ont the highway. The party itself was really nice–the house, which used to be a Satanic temple, I think, was also very interesting. John Cameron Mitchell’s residence is the very top floor, and I am actually kind of curious about the house now, which is called the Temple1. (side note: I can’ believe how much the Marigny has changed in the years since we moved to the Elysian Fields office, but it’s been a very long time since I have driven to the other side of Elysian Fields and gone into the Marigny.) I saw some people I wanted to see, got to see the house, and of course didn’t take any pictures. I stayed for an hour, which is an accomplishment. The live music was amazing, and the food was terrific. I was driving so I didn’t have anything to drink, and came home to change into something comfortable and to relax (and watch The Real Housewives of Salt Lake City) before going to bed. I slept later this morning than I usually do, too, but feel pretty good and will be ready to dive into the work-at-home spice mines relatively soon. The apartment is also a terrible mess; the stacks of dirty dishes here in the kitchen, not to mention the general disarray of the entire apartment, needs to be worked on today.

I never did make a to-do list, either–which means I need to make one today, one for the weekend and one through Thanksgiving (Paul is leaving on Tuesday), and start crossing things off. I want to get more writing done this weekend–I want to finish that short story and start editing Scotty, maybe even finish another essay and perhaps even dive into some other writing, too. I also know it’s an ambitious plan for the weekend and I may just decide meh, let me vegetate in my easy chair with Sparky and blow off a day, as I so often do. That’s also fine, too.

More lighter fluid keeps getting squirted on the dumpster fire that is the country/world now, and I am veering between optimism and pessimism about the future–I often descend into gallows humor, as is my wont–as a method of dealing with the existential nightmare we are being unwillingly dragged into. I’m not sure what it says about me that I always deal with these sorts of things by laughing at them, even when they truly aren’t funny; but that’s what happens when you grow up gay in a homophobic society. Legacy media continues to swirl around the toilet bowl, capitulating in advance as their ratings and subscription rates continue to fall deservedly. Their corporate masters decided that it was better for their ratings to be Leaders of the Opposition to get those monster ratings they had during the first term again, so they betrayed their viewers by doing everything they could to throw the election to the Right, rubbing their monstrous little hands with glee while they watched their potential ratings and advertising revenue shoot up again. We’re the Resistance and we’re here for you! Alas, they severely overestimated their importance and the ignorance of their viewers/readers. We saw them betray us, again and again, playing a long game that wasn’t actually a game for many of their audience. When they shivved Biden this past summer, starting with that faux-liberal piece of shit George Clooney (who lives in fucking Italy) in his “I’m so much smarter than anyone else with progressive credentials” arrogance writing that disgusting editorial in the New Yuck Times and has been completely invisible since he accepted his thirty pieces of silver. (I laugh every time Apple TV tries to push his latest film on me. No thanks, never thought he was very talented or handsome, and still think he did his best work on The Facts of Life and Roseanne.) But Paul and I have our exit plan if it comes to that. I know, man plans and God laughs, but it makes me feel better.

I cannot believe the fall/winter holidays are upon us already. Madness! But it has been a year, hasn’t it? Heavy heaving sigh. I should go fold those clothes, so on that note, I am going to bring this to a close and get some more coffee, too. Have a lovely Friday, Constant Reader, and who knows if I’ll be back again before tomorrow morning? It’s a mystery!

  1. There are so many cool and interesting places in New Orleans! I’ve lived her for almost thirty years now and still find new to me cool spots all the time. ↩︎

Hell is for Children

Hollywood has always been interesting to me, ever since I was a kid. I am not as obsessed with Hollywood and celebrity culture as I used to be; I used to love awards shows but now find them kind of tedious and a lot of to-do about nothing very much. Paul and I used to watch any and every awards show, regardless of what they were for; now it’s just easier to follow live updates and skip the forced, awkward scripted banter and speeches where winners attempt to thank everyone they know before the band starts playing them off.1 That’s always cringey to me–not for the person the band is playing for, but for the event itself. I get that they want it to end on time, but at the same time it seems bad form to celebrate someone and then cut them off as they do celebrate? Your mileage, as they say, may vary.

One thing I did notice when my Hollywood fascination was at its peak was how cleaned up and sanitized Hollywood bios were, as opposed to the fiction written about Hollywood. You’d never know, for example, from reading a biography of Spencer Tracy that he wasn’t just “good friends” with Katharine Hepburn, or that Roddy McDowell never married for a reason, or that some stars may have been forced to have sex with casting directors, agents, and producers to get started. But those marvelous Hollywood novels (dismissed and disdained by critics as trash) were so much fun to read, and they always ended in tragedy. I also always wondered–affairs and divorces were also fairly common amongst Hollywood celebrities–how much truth there was in those stories; often I could identify characters as real people (for some books–cough Valley of the Dolls cough–trying to figure out who the characters were based on was part of the fun of reading them). And of course, the existence of “studio fixers”–yeah, there’s still a bunch of stories from Hollywood’s past we may never know the real story behind, let alone the stuff they buried so completely it’ll never be known–definitely speaks to the need for them, so yeah, Hollywood had a lot of secrets.

And now, knowing what I know about powerful Hollywood figures and how they behave? I’d be more surprised if they didn’t see the contract players as a harem of men and women for them to play games with.

I also have a tendency to avoid highly praised writers and books (and other forms of entertainment, of course), because I always end up disappointed, which is fault of neither author nor their work. Jordan Harper has been praised a lot, so I was hesitant to read him…but having now read Everybody Knows, I don’t regret waiting to read it because I saved a real treat for myself.

For want of a better word, wow.

Los Angeles burns.

Some sicko is torching homeless camps. Tonight they hit a tent city in Los Feliz near the 5. The fire spread to Griffin Park. The smoke makes the sunset unbelievable. The particles in the air slash the light, shift it red. They make the sky a neon wound.

Mae waits outside the secret entrance to the Chateau Marmont. She watches Saturday-night tourists wander Sunset Boulevard, their eyes bloodshot from the smoke. They cough and trade looks. They never thought the Sunset Strip would smell like a campfire.

Mae moves around the sidewalk like a boxer before the fight. Her face is sharp and bookish, framed in a Lulu bob. She wears a vintage floral jumpsuit. She’s got eyes like a wolf on the hunt–she hides them behind chunky oversized glasses. Nobody ever sees her coming.

Jordan Harper is an amazing writer. That’s where we need to start with this book. Yes, the story is compelling and fascinating and dirty and sleazy and makes you kind of want to take a Silkwood shower. The characters–all of them, from the two leads on–are defined and fully dimensional, with interior lives and motivations. Our two main characters, Mae and Chris, are modern-day fixers…but in modern times they’re called “flacks” and work for “p.r. firms”, even if their job is the same as the tough guys who worked for MGM and Warners and Fox back in the day. But the writing is what sold me on book and writer; those opening paragraphs are as fine a series of opening paragraphs I’ve ever read. The dialogue is real, the characters are awful but you understand why they are awful–and both Mae and Chris have seen their fair share of horrific cover-ups and helping their clients get off scot-free every time they get in over their heads. In the very first chapter, Mae is on the job helping a young former child actress transitioning into adult roles out of drug overdose situation in her rooms at the Marmont, and her quick thinking and moving gets the young woman out of there without being seen or caught.

Mae is very good at her job.

Her boss sets up a meeting with her–off the books, away from the office–but on his way to meet her, he is murdered. It’s supposedly a car-jacking go wrong, but Mae has to wonder, is it? He’d seemed like he was about to hit a financial bonanza, but needed her help. Mae decides to look into his murder–which Chris winds up working as well from another direction. Mae and Chris didn’t work out the first time–but they’ve never forgotten each other, and soon join forces. Both were coming to the conclusion that their jobs were sleazy and they were helping bad people get away with doing bad things, and when they realize what is at the root of all the trouble, they see it as an opportunity to make some cash and perhaps do a little good on their way out to retirement.

And what’s going on in Hollywood is something horrible, indeed.

I loved this book, and deeply resented not having the time to read it all the way through in one sitting, so am really glad I made the time to sit down and finish it–in one sitting. I was about forty or fifty pages in, and sat down and didn’t budge till it was done. That authorial voice! The influence of the hardboiled masters is clearly there, but Harper has his own distinctive style and authorial voice that makes him unique in the business–and that’s not an easy thing to do.

I can’t wait to read more of his work.

  1. I do think this aversion, or lack of interest, in awards shows has come from attending so many writing awards banquets, and yes, it’s a lovely problem to have. At some point I will go talk about my antipathy to awards…but must and always will confess to loving being nominated for things. My jones for that itch to be scratched has happened more than I could have ever dreamed. ↩︎

Roll Away the Stone

Saturday morning and Sparky flatly refused to let me sleep in this morning, but in fairness, I got a little more than an hour of extra sleep. My back feels a bit stiff this morning, but I do feel rested, and the coffee will most likely clear the cobwebs. I have to run to the grocery store today, and that may be all I need to leave the house for today, which is perfectly fine with me. It looks beautiful outside, but I am sure it is the usual forecast for New Orleans: hot, humid, chance of rain. I haven’t looked at the hurricane center yet to see what’s going on with the tropical systems trying to form, but I’ll most likely do that once I’ve finished this.

Yesterday was a nice work-at-home day. I did pick up the mail (got my copy of James Polchin’s Shadow Men, a queer true crime case from the 1920s, which is all kinds of awesome). After I finished working for the day, Paul and I finished watching season 3 of Bridgerton, which we both greatly enjoyed, before moving on to The Acolyte and the new season of The Boys, which is its last. I did some writing–I started pulling the novella apart, in order to do an outline and get a better idea about how to expand it; I actually want to start writing today, if I could be so lucky, I also intend to spend some time reading today; I need to reread some things I have in progress, and would also like to get started on my next read, Horror Movie by Paul Tremblay, which I am really looking forward to; Tremblay is one of my favorite writers. I also want to get the house cleaned up some, as well as make a grocery run at some point in the afternoon. (We don’t need much, really, but really need what I have to get.)

I also worked on my body culture pride post, which actually has now turned into quite a lengthy personal essay; so much so that I may not ever post it here. The essay itself can go on my Substack; I’ve been putting the Pride posts there as well as here because, I don’t know, it just seemed like a better place for them–which seemed silly to post them in both places. Last night, the recognition that the essay was probably a Substack only post made me think about what I am doing with a Substack and a blog, and last night I realized that I should use the Substack for longer form personal essays and keep the blog as it has always been; a daily report on my life and the occasional discussion of a book, television show, or film I’ve greatly enjoyed; the reviews might go in both places, too. I think I can still make the body culture post, but the essay will have to be whittled down and revised; maybe I should do it from the perspective of life lessons learned from getting in shape and actually working as a personal trainer. (Again, seeing that turn into a longer form essay even as I talk about it here and think about it as I type.) Writing these is also an exercise in memory for me, which also is kind of helpful as I am researching the early 1970s in the Chicago suburbs.

I have to admit I greatly enjoyed season three of Bridgerton. Penelope has been one of my favorite characters since the show started, and I’ve always deeply empathized with her as she was ignored, made fun of it, and made to feel invisible. It made sense for her to be Lady Whistledown, and the choice given to her by the show–either Lady Whistledown or the love of her life–was very cleverly done. I wanted her and Colin to resolve everything and get their happily ever after, but I didn’t think it was fair she had to give up who she was in order to get it, you know? This season really emphasized how shitty life really was for these society women during that period, and I’ve always been fond of the actress who plays her mother (she was magnificent in Rome as Atia of the Julii), and this season gave her a chance to really shine as well, as she realized the daughter she always overlooked and never thought would amount to anything was actually the true jewel of her children–and who made the best match in the end. (I also predicted the end several episodes in, involving the Featherington money and title.) It was, all in all, very well done, and I think it may be my favorite of all the seasons, and precisely because Nicola Coughlin is such a compelling actress. It’s nothing serious, of course; Bridgerton is a light fluffy confection, meant to look beautiful and present this wonderful tapestry of what Regency England could have been like, and who doesn’t love a tricky romance with obstacles that must be overcome?

I’ve always wanted to write a romance, but in all honesty am not really sure if I can. I think I’ll put that on the writing agenda for 2025. Why not try? It would most definitely be a challenge to write, and I always prefer challenges.

And on that note, I am going to finish this, get another coffee, and get my day underway. Have a lovely Saturday, Constant Reader, and I’ll probably be back later on. I’m tricky like that. 🙂

This is NOT why I am a football fan, but it certainly doesn’t hurt. 🙂

Take a Chance On Me

Ah, Murder in the Rue Dauphine.

It’s always weird for me to talk about my writing and my books and so forth on here; I always worry that I am either contradicting and/or repeating myself. When you’re as self-obsessed as I am, that can be a problem; talking about myself is probably my favorite thing to do–on here, at least. And I feel like I’ve told the story of where Chanse came from and how the series developed from the very beginning many, many times.

It was when I was living in Houston that I rediscovered crime fiction, and the old love was even deeper once it was rediscovered. This was the period when I read most of the Perry Mason novels, discovered Paretsky and Grafton and Muller, and decided to give Travis McGee and John D. MacDonald another try. (I had read The Dreadful Lemon Sky when I was a teenager, but I hadn’t liked it; I was more into the classic detective mystery, with lots of suspects and a denouement with everyone gathered in a drawing room as the identity of the killer was unveiled–the McGee series was definitely not that. But MacDonald had written a superb introduction to Stephen King’s first short story collection, Night Shift, and I had always wanted to give him another chance–pun fully intended.) I devoured the McGee series this time around; and I really admired the character and how fully rounded and developed he was (I should give the series a reread; I’d be curious to see how they hold up now)…and armed with all these new private eye novels and Perry Mason puzzles, so I started coming up with my own version. Even the name was a shout out to McGee. My character was also tall with sandy/dirty blond hair, a former college football player, and he lived in Houston, with an office downtown and a secretary named Clara. The title of the first book was going to be The Body in the Bayou, and I started basing the case on the tragic Joan Robinson Hill case, immortalized in Tommy Thompson’s Blood and Money (the premise of the story was that the character representing Joan’s father hires Chanse after Joan’s death to find dirt on John–and then John is murdered; fictionalized, of course.) I wrote about six or seven really bad chapters long hand before giving up. I didn’t know how to write a novel then nor did I understand the concept of rewrites and revisions and drafts. (My ignorance was truly astounding.) The hurdle I couldn’t clear was typing. I was a terrible typist. I’d had a job in California working for an insurance brokerage that was computerized, and had a word processing program that I used to write short stories on; it made such an incredible difference that I knew I would have a much better shot at actually making my dreams come true if I only had a word processor…

In 1991, after I moved to Tampa, I managed to get a word processor, and that was what I wrote my first two and a half young adult novels on–the original drafts of Sara, Sorceress, and Sleeping Angel–and used it happily for several years until it finally died on me. But by then, I was living with Paul and had swung back around to wanting to write adult crime fiction again, and I wanted to write the Chanse character that I’d already created…so I picked back up on The Body in the Bayou, moved it from Houston to New Orleans, got rid of the office and the secretary, and made Chanse gay. I kept the title, but threw away the story; I wanted it to be a gay story, too. I don’t really remember the plot, but it had to do with the murder of a beautiful boy-toy for a wealthy closeted gay man in New Orleans…and Chanse knew the boy-toy from his days working as an escort before he landed the rich man, I wrote about six or seven chapters of this before we moved to New Orleans….and I realized I’d have to throw it all out again because it was all wrong; I’d made the classic mistake so many writers make when writing about New Orleans: writing about it having never lived here, I only had tourist experiences–which are vastly and dramatically different from the actually “living here” experiences. So, once again, I threw it all out and started over, this time calling it Tricks instead of The Body in the Bayou.

The title morphed again to the less saleable Faggots Die after the first draft; and I remember talking to Felice Picano–he was coming into town for the Tennessee Williams Festival, and I picked him up at the airport. As we drove back into the city from Kenner, we talked about my book and the series, and he nixed the new title as well as the old one. “No one, ” he wisely said, “will pick up a book called Faggots Die, and Tricks sounds like a pornographic memoir of your sex life.” Felice was actually the one who suggested I mimic titles for the series from a classic writer…and we were throwing titles around in the car when I said, “You know, the streets in the Quarter are technically rues–Rue Bourbon, Rue Royale, Rue Dumaine–and the murder happens on Dauphine. Maybe Murder in the Rue Dauphine?”

“That’s perfect,” Felice said, and then we played with Poe titles the rest of the way into the city–incidentally, one of them was The Purloined Rentboy, which became my short story “The Affair of the Purloined Rentboy”, so never throw anything away.

And thus was Murder in the Rue Dauphine titled; and the plan for the series titles was also devised–the branding was changed by the publisher, but I can honestly say my first book was titled by Felice Picano.

Murder in the Rue Dauhoine has had three covers in its 21 years of existence. This center one is the current.

Never come to New Orleans in the summer. It’s hot. It’s humid. It’s sticky. It’s damp. It’s hot. Air conditioners blow on high. Ceiling fans rotate. Nothing helps. The air is thick as syrup. Sweat becomes a given. No antiperspirant works. Aerosols, sticks, powders, and creams all fail. The thick air just hangs there, brooding. The sun shows no mercy. The vegetation grows out of control. Everything’s wet. The build­ings perspire. Even a simple task becomes a chore. Taking the garbage out becomes an ordeal. The heat makes the garbage rot faster. The city starts to smell sour. The locals try to mask the smell of sweat with more perfume. Hair spray sales go up. Women turn their hair into lacquered helmets that start to sag after an hour or so.

Even the flies get lazy.

My sinuses were giving me fits as I left the airport and headed into the city. It was only 7 o’clock in the morning but already hotter than hell. The air was thick. I reached for the box of tissue under my seat and blew my nose. The pressure in my ears popped. Blessed relief.

As I drove alongside the runways I could see a Transco Airlines 737 taxiing into takeoff position. I saluted as I drove past, thinking it might be the flight that my current lover was working. Paul looked good in the uniform. It takes a great body to look sexy in polyester. He does.

He’d be gone for four days on this trip. I was at loose ends. I’d wrapped up a security job for Crown Enterprises the previous Wednesday. The big check that I’d banked guaranteed I wouldn’t have to worry about money for a while. I like when money’s not a concern.

And so began a series that lasted for seven titles and about twelve years or so; I don’t remember what year the last book in the series was published. I never expected anyone would publish it; it was intended to be a “practice novel” so I would get used to rejections and learn. It was also the first manuscript I ever wrote that went through multiple drafts before I thought it was finished enough to send out on query. It was supposed to be an exercise in learning humility and getting experience with the business while I wrote the book I did expect to get an agent with and sell–which was what I’d always called “the Kansas book” for over a decade at this point. (It eventually morphed into #shedeservedit.) But you never really learn what you’re supposed to when you’re stubborn, thin-skinned, and used to being demeaned and talked over and not taken seriously, for any number of reasons. I sent the manuscript to three agents: two sent me lovely but form rejections, which was disappointed but not surprising. I took this well, put the manuscripts away to send to three more once the final rejection came.

It came on a Friday, if I recall correctly. I went to pick-up the mail and my manuscript was there. Not a surprise, of course, but still a little disappointing. I went out to my car and opened the package…and paper-clipped to the title page of the rubber-band bound manuscript was a torn piece of used paper, with a note in ink reading I find this manuscript and characters neither interesting or compelling with the agent’s initials at the bottom.

It was like being slapped in the face.

By the time I got home I was in a raging fury. I was literally shaking with rage when I came inside. How fucking unprofessional, I thought as I sat down at my computer to check my emails, trying to decide how I would enact my vengeance on this rude piece of shit.1 There was an email there from the editor I was working with on an anthology which had taken my first-ever fiction short story and thus would be my first publication. I had never read the signature line–mainly because I was so excited for my first fiction sale (NARRATOR VOICE: it was porn). This day, he concluded his email with Please send us more work. We definitely want to see more from you and as my ego preened, slightly soothed from the insulting agent note from earlier in the day2, I also looked down at the signature line and realized I was communicating with the senior editor at Alyson Books! I immediately wrote him back a very short note: I’ve written a novel with a gay private eye set in New Orleans, would you be interested in that? and before I could talk myself out of it, hit send.

He wrote back immediately and said please send it to me ASAP!

I put the same manuscript back in a new envelope, and drove back to the postal service to get it in the mail before I changed my mind, and breathed a sigh of relief once I got back to the car–and immediately forgot all about it.

Six weeks later I came home to a phone message from the editor. I called him back, he made me an offer, and my career leapt forward much faster than I expected…and it started a roll of good luck and “being in the right place at the right time” that has kept me publishing almost non-stop since Murder in the Rue Dauphine was released in 2002.

It sold really well, got mostly favorable reviews, and scored me my first Lambda Literary Award nomination.

Not bad for a manuscript and characters who were neither interesting or compelling, right?3

It also took me a long time to realize–or rationalize–that the note wasn’t meant for me. (I was most offended that I wasn’t even worthy of an actual form rejection letter; that was the truly insulting part for me.) I realized when telling this story on a panel somewhere, that the note was probably meant for an intern or a secretary or an assistant, who just shoved the whole thing in an envelope to do the rejection and through some wild Lucy-and-Ethel office shenanigans, it went out without the rejection letter and with the note intended for internal eyes only…and made me wonder, how different would my career and life be had that fuck-up not happened?

We’ll never know, I guess.

  1. Not really proud of this reaction, but I did get the last laugh. ↩︎
  2. Said agent died a few years later. I may have smiled and said good, a la Bette Davis vis a vis Joan Crawford’s death. ↩︎
  3. I may be more forgiving about a lot of things these days, but I will always be petty about that hateful agent. ↩︎

Friends

After we moved to the suburbs and had not only a house but a second car, my mother decided that maybe religion was missing from the lives of my sister and I, and began taking us to church–not the Southern Baptist faith she herself was raised in, but the Church of Christ, which was my father’s family’s faith. It wasn’t like my sister and I hadn’t been to church before; whenever we visited relatives in Alabama we were inevitably dragged to church with them, whether we wanted to go or not. It wasn’t even up for debate, so yes, in some ways, my father’s family kind of forced religion on us when we didn’t really go to church at home with our parents. I never knew why Mom decided we needed to start going–she wound up having an off-and-on relationship with the church for the rest of her life–but we did. Dad played golf every Sunday morning and often hit buckets of balls after or maybe went out for lunch with the other players; I don’t know. But not only did we start going to church, she rewarded us by taking us to Ponderosa for lunch (where I first discovered Catalina French salad dressing, a favorite to this day) and then we’d go see a movie. Most of the movies are forgotten now, collecting dust and cobwebs until I think about that movie again and remember it was one Mom took us to.

The Last of Sheila was one of those movies, and I fell in love with it as I watched. It had everything I could possibly want: an incredibly clever murder mystery, a cast of movie stars I recognized, and it was about Hollywood, even though set and shot along the Riviera. It was an inside look at the rich and glamorous–something I felt was like another planet to me in my subdivision house, in my lower middle class existence which was a place where I felt like I didn’t belong.

Shortly after seeing the movie, I was at Zayre’s with a couple of bucks to buy books with, and there were three I wanted–The Last of Sheila and two others, but I could only afford two of them, and I regretfully put The Last of Sheila back because I’d already seen the movie and I could get it the next time.

Constant Reader, it wasn’t there when I went back. I never forget there was a book, either–but I didn’t know whether it was a novelization or an actual book the film had been based on; and I didn’t mind reading novelizations, either. When I rewatched the film again during the pandemic, I remembered there was a book and started looking for it on-line. It was clearly rare and beloved, because whenever a copy would come up for sale on second-hand sites it was always priced anywhere from $150-$300, and I didn’t care about the nostalgic aspects of it that much. Then last summer two popped up on ebay; both more expensive than I would have liked but still–reasonable enough to consider. I put in a bid on one and then realized the other was a “buy it now”, so I went ahead and bought it. A few days later I won the bid–and a little confused, decided to go ahead and honor the bid since I had put one in but simply forgot about it, and I gave the other away to a friend who also loved the movie for Christmas.

And finally, I settled in to read it–after another, recent rewatch.

The Sheila rode at anchor, stern to the quay, stern lines fastened securely over the bollards. The Mediterranean sun glanced off the brightwork and made of the white hull a dazzling blur. Her eighty-seven feet dwarfed the sleek ketch on her port side, a racing vessel owned by the pretender to the Spanish throne, but the Sheila was in her turn outclassed by the ninety-five-footer on her starboard, a powerful yacht owned by a South African diamond billionaire. The Palma marina was, as usual in the summer, crowded with the pleasure craft of the wealthy, berthed as tightly together as possible, their anchor chains frequently fouling.

Lee Parkman swung her long slender legs out of the taxicab and stood somewhat shakily on the quay, shielding her eyes from the too-bright noonday sun that pierced even through the lenses of. her oversized sunglasses. Her legs still felt rubbery from the long, bumpy tide over the dursty roads that led from the Palma Airport to the marina. Mallorca was like that, she thought. The paradox of moderan airport and luxurious anchorage linked by an ancient and ill-kept road.

I don’t know if they still do novelizations of popular films as a merchandising gimmick–the cover of this one has a little admonition to see the film READ THE NOVEL and of course, the ever-popular Now a Major Motion Picture From Warner Brothers. There’s also a lovely cast photo prominently featured on the book cover–with the cast posed together in the same way they are in the photograph in the book, which holds the key to the very clever puzzle at the heart of the book, and what a cast of early 1970’s luminaries it contained! James Mason, Joan Hackett, Dyan Cannon, James Coburn, a gorgeous young Ian McShane, Richard Benjamin, and the fabulous Raquel Welch. All play, in a way, traditional Hollywood archetypes: Mason is the director fallen on hard times; Benjamin the writer who can’t get a script film so works on rewrites of other people’s work; Cannon the blowsy loud shark-like Hollywood agent (based on Sue Mengers, anyone remember her?), Coburn as the asshole abusive producer; Welch playing the stunningly beautiful actress with little talent; McShane as her loser husband/manager; and Hackett as the Hollywood heiress, whose father was a monstrous tyrannical producer like the Coburn character, married to the Benjamin character and the only thing keeping him out of hock.

Coburn’s character, Clinton, invites all the others for a week-long trip along the Riviera on his boat, the Sheila, named after his late wife, killed by a hit and run driver about a year earlier. Sheila was a gossip columnist that Clinton truly loved, but she was also a typical Hollywood rags-to-riches story. She started out as a call girl and worked her way up to gossip columnist and married a rich producer before her tragic death. The driver of the car that killed her was never found. He claims to want to produce a picture, a way to honor his dead wife, called The Last of Sheila, which he wants Benjamin/Tom to write, Mason/Philip to direct, and Welch/Alice to star in. They will also spend the week playing a game–each person is assigned a card, and every night they will get clues they will have to solve to figure out who has the card. Once the person who has the card solves it, the game is over for the night so you have to find out who has the card before the cardholder does to get a point. None of them really want to play–but once the first night gets underway, some of them get into it and some of them don’t. There are also all kinds of clues and hints that something a lot more sinister is going on below the surface, as the guests become uncomfortably aware that the game is really about them and their secrets…and then there’s an attempted murder, and then Clinton himself is murdered on the second night.

It’s a fantastic set-up, and it’s an incredibly clever plot. The film’s screenplay, from which the novelization was adapted, was written by closeted gay actor Anthony Perkins and Stephen Sondheim (yes, that same Stephen Sondheim), which also lends depth and insight into this world of cutthroat behavior, backstabbing, and vengeance. The novelization itself is one of the better ones I’ve ever read; they were usually cranked out quickly by a pseudonymous writer trying to make a quick buck (no harm there; I’d certainly write them if the price was right and they were still a thing) who basically simply turned the screenplay into a book, without getting much into the story or layers or character development. But this one of The Last of Sheila is the rare one that you put down when finished and think, Oh, there was so much more that could have been told there–and it even fleshes the characters and the backstory–and the motives–out even further. It actually helps with your appreciation of the film by giving necessary back story to the relationships between them and their individual motives, and I am very glad that I read it.

The Last of Sheila will always be one of my favorite films, because it remains fresh and interesting and its cleverness never stops amazing me every time I watch it.

And of course, Bette Midler’s “Friends” plays over the closing credits–after the perfect ending–which was also my first real exposure to the Divine Miss M, whose debut album I bought shortly after seeing the film and I’ve been a fan ever since.

How did anyone not know?