Tag: Saints and Sinners

December 1963 (Oh What a Night)

Friday morning, and TERMITE ARMAGEDDON is nigh. I am up before dawn because they are coming to tent the house and commit genocide around eight, so I have to wrestle Scooter into his carrier before then so I can get him to the spa when they open at eight. Then I am going to drive back and leave the car at the house, and Lyft down to the hotel for the Weekend o’Festivals. I also have to go to my doctor at 1:30 in the afternoon; I think I’ll leave early and take the streetcar, so i can sightsee and read on my way. And then…it’s just about the festivals for the weekend until we are cleared to come back to the house. I’ll probably do that on Sunday after my panel, if I can, so I can start laundering things and washing dishes and moving the perishables back over from the carriage house, so I can go get Scooter first thing Monday morning and then go make groceries.

Heavy heaving sigh. I keep finding things that might get contaminated. Well, when I take Scooter to the kitty spa I guess I’ll be loading more things into the hatch of the car than I’d thought I would have to.

Now that the morning of Termite Armageddon is here, I am much calmer than I thought I’d be. My suitcases are packed, the majority of the cabinets have been emptied, and all I have to do is wrestle Scooter into his carrier. I think I can manage it on my own, although it’s usually a two-person job. I think I’m also just going to grab the streetcar and come back here to get the car; that way I can go pick up the mail as well…or should I just take the streetcar all the way so I can keep reading? Decisions, decisions. One of the things I hate the most about anything is having to rush. Rushing causes me stress–almost to the breaking point–so I always try, when I have mornings like this, to get things done and try to give myself enough time so I don’t have to get stressed and rush and freak out–which, of course, is how I always wind up forgetting things along the way.

But tonight I get to have dinner with Alafair Burke and Sarah Weinman!

ENVY ME.

Yesterday I’m not going to lie; I was stressed as all hell, so feeling so calm this morning is quite lovely. I don’t know if I am actually calm or if it’s because I’m actually not quite awake yet, but in either case, there it is, you know? It is what it is, and whatever I didn’t get out of the Lost Apartment are things that will have to be thrown away at some point when we come back home, which I’m more than fine with. Moving the perishables to the carriage house made me realize something–not only do I hoard books, I hoard food. I think it comes from being poor, being hungry, and not having anything to eat in the house (my mom’s house is practically bulging with food; now i wonder if the poverty from her early married days, when my sister and I were kids, has something to do with that as well) and I  am realizing that there’s really no reason for there to be so much food in the house. So, in some ways, the Termite Armageddon is a good thing, because it’s forcing me to clean out my refrigerator, freezer, and kitchen cabinets.

In a way, I am having spring cleaning forced on me, because definitely Monday I am going to have to spend the majority of the day cleaning the house.

Again, not a bad thing.

But it is what it is.

So, I am hoping this weekend will give me the boost I need, the kick in the part, as it were, to get me writing and thinking about my writing, again. I am having a lovely time–albeit going rather slowly–revising the WIP, and I am already thinking ahead to the next thing. I’d like to see April spent writing up a storm, and revising short stories, making another push to get some stories into print. I also need to get caught up on all sorts of other things–I still haven’t gotten the damned brake tag–and I have taxes and things to sort. I am hoping that the weekend in the suite at the hotel will do the trick; give me some time to relax, read, and get caught up on things that I have been seriously lagging on. I feel like I’ve been in a bit of a malaise thus far this year; since finishing Royal Street Reveillon, if I am going to be completely honest, and going back to the Great Data Disaster of 2018. But the Weekend o’Festivals has always given me the kick in the pants I need to get there.

And now, I need to go load the car and sneak the kitty carrier down out of the storage without Scooter seeing it, else I’ll never get him out from under the bed.

Oh, spice mines….how I wish I could resist your siren song.

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Play that Funky Music

SO, so much to do tonight and this morning. The termite tenters arrive at eight tomorrow morning, so basically all I will have time to do tomorrow morning is get up and have some coffee before I have to take Scooter to the spa and head down to the hotel. I also have to head uptown in the afternoon for my doctor’s appointment at one thirty; I’ll probably just take the streetcar back to the Quarter from there. I am feeling more than a little pressed for time, as I have some other things I have to get done as well, but it will all, I am sure, work out. And since I have to get up so early tomorrow, I need to go to bed relatively early this evening. But it’s also a short day at the office for me, so that will be most helpful as well. I have to stop on the way to work (or on the way home) at the post office so I can mail my tax documents to my accountant–something else I have to do is calculate my expenses for 2018 for her, but I’m not too terribly concerned about that; it shouldn’t take me very long to do.

I really am feeling more than a bit frustrated here because I really want to be working on my book–the revisions of the earlier chapters is starting to get easier, and naturally, I have to stop and do other things, which is enormously irritating and makes me more than a little crabby. But it cannot be helped; these things must get done, and I think–once I finish reading my book for my panel I am moderating on Saturday, and get the other thing done that I need to get done–I can get back to work on the WIP. I also have to go make groceries at some point on Monday, in the middle of washing the bed linens and washing all the dishes, pots and pans just to make sure we won’t poison ourselves by eating from them…but perhaps at some time on Monday while all that chaos is going on around me, I can manage to get some rewriting time in.

I did sleep rather well last night, which was also lovely; again I could  have slept much later than I was able to, but as I said, I have things to get done this morning and time’s a-wasting. I also have to pack this evening, and remember to leave stuff out that I can use for showering and shaving and brushing my teeth in the morning. Ideally, I would like to just go ahead and put the suitcases in the car tonight, so tomorrow all I have to do is drink some coffee, take a quick shower, and corral Scooter into his carrier before dashing out of here at eight a.m. precisely. I figure I can be at the Monteleone by nine, if everything goes well, which will give me another three precious hours of reading time before heading uptown to the doctor. (I will, of course, bring the book with me so I can continue reading as I get there and back.) I think Saturday morning will give me enough time to get up and get ready for the panel; and then since I don’t have any plans for Saturday evening I can perhaps spend that time in the suite writing.

One can hope.

I am basically trying really hard not to get panicked this morning over everything that must be done–panicking won’t help or solve any problems, it never does–before I head into the office this morning. I also have to get ready to participate in the reading series on Sunday at Saints and Sinners; I’ve pretty much decided to read from “This Town,” my story in Murder-a-Go-Go’s, even though it would probably be smarter to read from Survivor’s Guilt and Other Stories…but I don’t get the chance to read very often, and I really do want to read this story publicly at some point.

I’ve already made my suitcase packing list, so all I need to really do is pack up grocery bags with the refrigerated goods so I can store them in the fridge at the office today, and maybe go ahead and pack the small rolling suitcase with the stuff I need to work on while I am at the hotel. Tonight I am going to be moving things over to the carriage house and making sure everything in the Lost Apartment is prepped for the termite genocide, and try to get to bed relatively early.

Monday is going to be, frankly, quite insane. I am hoping we’ll be able to get back into the house on Sunday–if so, I will probably duck out of the hotel, skip the closing, and come back home early so I can start washing things, in order to make Monday less stressful. If we can’t come back on Sunday evening, well, it’ll have to be Monday morning madness.

And then I get to go back to work on Tuesday! Hurray!

Heavy heaving sigh. That which doesn’t kill us, and all that.

And now back to the spice mines.

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Kiss and Say Goodbye

Wednesday morning, and I could have slept until tomorrow. Paul moves into the hotel today for the Weekend o’Festivals, and I get to come home to an empty house and Needy Kitty ™. Tomorrow I get to finish packing things up and moving them out before the Termite Tent arrives sometime on Friday, which is when I get to somehow finagle Scooter into his carrier and get him to the spa for the weekend, move into the hotel, and somehow find the time (and a way) to get to my doctor’s appointment uptown later that same day.

Heavy sigh.

But that’s okay. I can manage it. I also have to start preparing for my panel, so I am going to try to finish reading Samantha Downing’s My Lovely Wife before Saturday. I am enjoying it–it’s quite good, and getting quite a bit of buzz this week–and I also have to decide what I am going to read on Sunday. I should probably read something from Survivor’s Guilt and Other Stories–promote promote promote–but I am leaning toward reading “This Town” from Murder-a-Go-Go’s. I feel terribly unprepared for this coming weekend, to be completely honest, primarily because I haven’t had a chance to actually focus on it. I still need to pack, too.

Heavier sigh.

But…that’s okay. I have a half-day on Thursday, as I said before, and all I really have to do before and after work that day is actually get ready for the weekend. I’ve already made my packing list for my suitcase, and sometime today I’ll make a list of the things I have to get done tomorrow. I also need to figure out what I am going to need to get done on Monday–besides go get groceries, restock the house, wash the bed linens and the clothes and all the dishes (hurray!)–while also trying to readjust back to normality while feeling exceptionally tired, as I never sleep well in hotels. I also have a bit of freelance writing that’s due on Monday, and I have to fit getting that done in there somewhere. I’ve also got  to send my tax stuff to my accountant, which I should probably mail today since I am going to the post office.

But I don’t have a lot to do this weekend–I have my panel at TWFest on Saturday, then my reading and a panel at Saints and Sinners on Sunday–and other than that, and dinner with some friends on Friday evening, I can pretty much hang out in the suite for the weekend and relax, maybe get some reading and writing done most of the time. I am not the best at getting things done while staying in a hotel room, but stranger things have happened and so one never knows. Usually we have someone staying with us in the suite, but it’s just us this year.

So, without Paul being home tonight or tomorrow, I should be able to get things done that I need to get done–around dealing with Needy Kitty ™. Some cleaning and organizing, packing…and then I am ready for the weekend.

I did work some on the WIP yesterday–not much; it took me a while to get back into the story–but something is better than nothing.

I’ll just be glad when this weekend has passed and everything has returned to that semblance of normal that passes for normal around here.

And then I can focus on getting the WIP and some short stories finished in April, so I can move on to rewrite the other in May, and maybe–just maybe–start something new in June or July, depending on where things fall. Who knows? Maybe I’ll even stay on schedule.

Stranger things have happened.

And now back to mining spice.

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Don’t Go Breaking My Heart

Last night when I got home from work I was so tired I literally repaired to the easy chair almost immediately, while a purring cat in my lap. I kept dozing off while I waited for Paul to get home, and finally, once he did make it through the front door, I gave up any pretense of being awake still and went directly to bed. I didn’t want to get up this morning (no different than any morning, really, other than it’s dark and rudely early), and would be more than happy to go straight back to bed for another few hours.

I did manage to revise the first chapter of the WIP yesterday; first chapters are always the hardest to do, quite frankly, and so I always end up spending the most time on them. The trick is to introduce your main character without a lot of explanation and back story–the temptation to write an entire chapter of back story is always, always present, and must be resisted; there’s no easier way to lose a reader than explaining back story….but there has to be enough for the chapter to make logical sense to the reader as well. It’s a balancing act; one that I’m not quite sure I’ve managed, but at least today I get to move on to Chapter Two.

Tonight I have to not only pack for the weekend but also continue to move perishable things over to the carriage house. I think the last thing I’m going to do is move things to the back of the car–the cat food, etc.–and since I’m not taking the car to the Quarter for the weekend (the cost of parking down there is absolutely insane) that should work. It’s also going to be a struggle getting Scooter into his travel kennel to take him to the Kitty Spa Friday morning; it’s usually a two-person job, and since he’s a Daddy’s kitty, not having Daddy to help me is going to make it a battle royale, I fear. I also have a doctor’s appointment Friday afternoon that I couldn’t reschedule before July (!), so it looks like the most likely progression here will be drop off the cat, drive back over here, and call a Lyft to take me to the Quarter, then grab another Lyft to the doctor, and take the streetcar back from there.

Madness; a weekend’s worth of utter and complete madness.

But I am feeling better about things; the lovely comments from people about my story in Murder-a-Go-Go’s plus getting some good revision done yesterday has me feeling better about my career and my ability to write again; it’s been a hot minute since I felt good about anything having to do with my writing, so it’s kind of lovely to have some confidence again. Or rather, restore the low confidence I’ve had most of my career. Writing is insane in that way; maybe the big names like Harlan Coben and Jeff Abbott and Lisa Scottoline and Karin Slaughter don’t ever suffer from Imposter Syndrome, but it’s really an integral part of my personality. I’ve had it about everything–not just writing. I constantly question, and have my entire life, whether I am good at my job (whatever it may have been at the time) or whether I am a hard worker or how clean my house is or whether I actually can write or if I am just somehow managing to cost by somehow, being read by non-discerning readers who can’t tell that I’m not a good writer.

And around and around and around it goes.

I started reading Samantha Downing’s wonderful My Lovely Wife yesterday on my lunch break, and it’s really really good. I am looking forward to moderating our “whodunit” panel this Saturday; hope to see you there.

And now back to the spice mines–because if I know anything, it’s that spice won’t mine itself.

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In America

Wednesday morning and it’s not quite sixty degrees yet this morning in New Orleans, so the space heater is on to take the chill out of my kitchen and my office space as I swill coffee and prepare for my day. I was exhausted yesterday, and fell asleep almost immediately after tumbling into bed. I had a fabulous night’s sleep, and this morning I feel very rested and well–although I could have easily stayed in bed for a while longer. Tomorrow morning I have to get up early because I have to have bloodwork done, but I am also in the home stretch of the week where the half-days are happening.

Huzzah!

I started–very slowly–revising the WIP’s first chapter last night. I’d always envisioned the book opening with the line The summer before my senior year my mother ruined my life, and while it is a great opening, it doesn’t really work with the story I am actually writing–while my character still believes that to be true, of course, as a framing device for the actual story my WIP has become it no longer works. For one thing, I am writing the book in a very close first person, present tense; so opening with a sentence and paragraph in the past tense, where he is obviously looking back to what happened that particular summer in Alabama, the shift in tense is awkward and abrupt and really doesn’t work anymore. I am horribly stubborn about this sort of thing, and it usually takes me much longer to give up and recognize that the opening I love so much has to go–so I am kind of pleased about that I’ve already gotten past that, to be honest. And the story is much better for it.

As I was writing those first ten chapters, too, I recognized holes in the plot when I saw them but, as is my wont, I simply made note of them and kept ploughing ahead. Part of the reason I want to go back and do a second draft of these chapters before I move on to the second half of the novel is because fixing those plot holes and cleaning up those mistakes will make writing the second half easier…and the book might go to twenty-five chapters, rather than the twenty I was thinking about. I”m not going to worry too much about length at the moment–that can always be worked out later–but I am very excited to be writing something new again.

And not to worry, Scotty fans–writing this doesn’t mean I’m not making notes and doing research for the next Scotty. I may not get to it until this fall, but I am going to get to it at some point.

Now I need to get on the stick and get my TWFest homework done. I have to have two books read by next weekend! This is ordinarily not a problem for me, but all kinds of crazy shit is going on around here. I have to have bloodwork done tomorrow, we have to start getting ready not only for the Weekend o’Festivals but also for the house tenting for termites that is going to occur that weekend as well–which means the easy day I have planned for that Friday is turning into a nightmare–I have to take the cat to board; I have to clean out our freezer because the power will be off; I have a doctor’s appointment that day; I have to figure out how to get all my stuff down to the hotel in the Quarter without the car (no fucking way am I paying hotel parking in the Quarter); and how to get ready for that evening’s parties and so forth….then the following Monday, also a day off for me, will require me to retrieve the cat and the car and everything else.

Just thinking about it is making me tired.

But on that note, I am heading back to the spice mines.

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No More Tears (Enough is Enough)

Good morning, and welcome to another cold January morning here in the Lost Apartment. I have some errands to run later today–later this morning, to be exact–and then I am spending the rest of the day holed up inside reading, cleaning, and probably watching figure skating on the television. We did watch the ladies’s final last night, which was quite fun, and am looking forward to seeing the competitions today. The European championships have also been going on this past week, so it’s all saved on Hulu for us to watch at our leisure. The Australian Open is also still happening–so much sport!–and so there’s that as well. I do want to finish reading my book today, and I want to read a short story, and start reading my next book as well.

And tomorrow I am cleaning out my email inbox if it kills me, and it just might.

I slept really well again last night–that’s three consecutive nights of good sleep, which is amazingly lovely.

Yesterday was also kind of a crazy day in the world, although it’s pretty safe to say that everyday has been kind of a crazy day for a while now. As I said to Paul the other night, “it’s like world politics has turned into Game of Thrones, only much scarier because it’s real.” And I know, world politics has always been very Game of Thrones, it’s just never been so obvious and apparent.

It’s hard to believe it’s almost February already, but there you have it and there it is. Carnival hovers on the horizon, and the Williams Festival/Saints and Sinners is just behind it. I am moderating a panel this year with Alafair Burke, Samantha Downing (My Lovely Wife) and Kristien Hemmerechts (The Woman Who Fed The Dogs) so I have some homework for that as well.

So much good reading to look forward to! Art Taylor also very graciously, along with Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine, made a pdf of his Edgar nominated short story “English 398: Fiction Workshop” available on-line, which I downloaded and look forward to reading. Art’s a terrific writer and a master of the short story (when I was nominated for the Macavity for “Survivor’s Guilt”, Art was the winner, and his story was amazing), and it’s always terrific to read one of his stories. (Hint hint: Art, how about a short story collection? Hint hint.)

I’m also going to dissect some short stories I am in the process of editing–unless I get lazy again. I rarely do this when I am editing/revising short stories, which makes my short stories actually kind of hit or miss; if the story works, it’s because I simply got lucky with it. But I think if I actually break the story down into what it’s about, and who the characters are and why they are the people they are, more of my stories would probably work. It’s a theory, at any rate, and there’s nothing I love to do more than break down my work and put it back together again (I’m being sarcastic, if you couldn’t tell).

And on that note, I am heading out into the frigid cold to get my errands out of the way before coming home to mine spice.

Have a lovely day, everyone!

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O Holy Night

The last day of 2018. I can hear the garbage trucks outside getting the trash, which means I’ve actually woken up at a relatively decent hour. Today is our annual lunch at Commander’s Palace with Jean and Gillian, which means very inexpensive martinis and all that entails. I also registered for Dallas Bouchercon yesterday and booked my hotel room. So much getting things done! I also worked on my technology issues yesterday–yes, they continue, Mojave is the stupidest thing Apple has ever done as an operating system–and have also been trying to update my phone, which doesn’t seem to be working. I really don’t want to have to get a new phone, but it seems as though this is what Apple is pushing me to do, which is infuriating.

But the desktop seems to be working the way it’s supposed to. Hmmm.

I read a lot of books last year, but I also judged for an award so I really can’t talk much  about any books that were actually released in 2018; which is unfortunate. I really enjoyed The Gates of Evangeline by Hester Young (for a book not published in 2018). I also read a lot of short stories. The Short Story Project was originally inspired, and intended, for me to read a lot of short stories and work as kind of a master class for me as far as writing short stories are concerned. As a project, I originally began it in 2017, but didn’t get very far with it. As a result, I decided to give it another try in 2018 and was much more successful with the project. Not only was I reading short stories, I wrote a lot of them. Some of those stories were actually sold; “This Town” to Murder-a-Go-Go’s, “The Silky Veils of Ardor” to The Beating of Black Wings, “Neighborhood Alert” to Mystery Tribune, “Cold Beer No Flies” to Florida Happens, and “A Whisper from the Graveyard” to another anthology whose name is escaping me at the moment. I also pulled together a collection of previously published and new stories, which will be released in April of 2019 but will be available for Saints and Sinners/Tennessee Williams Festival, Survivor’s Guilt and Other Stories. I also wrote another Scotty (I really need to finish revising it), which will also be out in the new year I think but I don’t have a release date yet. That was pretty productive, and I also managed eight chapters of a young adult novel, the current WIP.

Not bad, coming from someone who wrote practically nothing in 2017. So, on that score, I am taking 2018 as a writing win.

I also edited the Bouchercon anthology for the second time, Florida Happens, and read a shit ton of short stories for that as well. I was very pleased with how that book turned out, in all honesty, and it looks absolutely gorgeous.

I also published my first ever Kindle Single, “Quiet Desperation,” and also finally got the ebook for Bourbon Street Blues up for Kindle. At some point I do hope to have a print edition for sale as well, but I am happy to have the ebook available. I also have to finish proofing Jackson Square Jazz so I can get that ebook up as well.

So, writing and publishing wise, 2018 was a good comeback of sorts; I managed to get back into the swing of writing again, and started producing publishable work, which was absolutely lovely. I started to say I got my confidence back, but that wouldn’t be true; I’ve never had much self-confidence when it comes to  my writing. I also started writing in journals again in 2017, which was enormously helpful in 2018. (I actually went through my most recent one last night–the one I am currently using–and found a lot of stuff that I thought I’d lost in the Great Data Disaster of 2018; things I shall simply need to retype and of course will back-up immediately.

Yesterday, while electronic equipment repaired itself and made itself usable again–we’ll see how usable it is as the days go by–I watched two movies–The Omega Man and Cabaret on Prime, as well as the documentary Gods of Football (I highly recommend this one for eye candy potential; it’s about the shooting of a calendar in Australia to raise money for breast cancer charities, starring professional rugby players in the nude, and yes, the eye candy is delectable). I watched a lot of good movies and television shows over the course of the year–The Haunting of Hill House and Schitt’s Creek probably the best television shows–so it was a very good year for that. (I have some thoughts on both The Omega Man and Cabaret, but will save those for another post at another time.)

I also got my first New Orleans Public Library card this past year, and began reading New Orleans histories, which were endlessly fascinating, which led me into another project, Monsters of New Orleans, which is another short story collection about what the title says, crime stories based on real cases in New Orleans but fictionalized. And there are an incredible amount of them. I read the introduction to Robert Tallant’s Ready to Hang: Seven Famous Murder Cases in New Orleans, and while I am aware that Tallant’s scholarship is questionable (I figured that out reading Voodoo in New Orleans), his books are always gossipy, which makes them perfect for New Orleans reading. What is real, what is true, and what is not is always something one has to wonder when reading anything about New Orleans history; some of it is legend, which is to be expected, and unprovable; some of it is very real and can be verified. Some of the stories in this collection, which I am going to work on, off and on, around other projects, will inevitably be complete fictions; but others will be based on true stories and/or legends of the city, like the Sultan’s Palace and Madame LaLaurie and Marie Laveau. It’s an exciting project, and the more I read of New Orleans history the more inspiration I get, not only for this project but for other Scotty books as well…which is a good thing, I was leaning towards ending the series with Royal Street Reveillon, but now that I’m finding stories that will work and keep the series fresh…there just may be a few more Scotty novels left in me yet.

My goal of losing weight and getting into better physical condition lasted for only a few months, and didn’t survive Carnival season–it was too hard to get to the gym during the parades, and between all the walking, passing out condoms, and standing at the corner, I was simply too exhausted to make it to the gym, and thus never made it back to the gym. I began 2018 weighing 228 pounds, the heaviest I’ve ever been, and have managed, through diet and portion control, to slim down to a consistent plateau of 213. This is actually pretty decent progress; not what I would have wanted to report at the end of 2018, but I am going to take it and put it into the win column, and we’ll see how 2019 turns out.

The day job also had some enormous changes; we moved out of the Frenchmen Street office, after being there since 2000 (I started working there in 2005) and into a new building on Elysian Fields. This also caused some upheaval and change in my life–I’m not fond of change–and it wasn’t perhaps the smoothest transition. But I’m getting used to it, and making the necessary adjustments in my life.

Now we are on the cusp to a new year. Tomorrow, I’ll talk about new goals for the new year. It is, of course, silly; it’s just another day and in the overall scheme of things, a new year really doesn’t mean anything is actually new; but we use this as a measure of marking time, and new beginnings. I’ve always thought that was rather silly; any day is a new day and a new beginning; why be controlled by the tyranny of the calendar and the societally created fiction of the new year?

But it is also convenient. If you set new goals every new year, you then have a way of measuring success and failure as it pertains to those goals. I am not as black-and-white as I used to be with goals–which is why I use goals instead of resolutions, as there is also a societal expectation that resolutions are made in order to not succeed–and a goal is merely that, a goal, and not something that is fixed in stone. The endgame we all are playing with these goals and resolutions is to effect change in our lives and make them, in theory at least, better. So, any progress on a goal is a way of making your life better.

I didn’t get an agent this year; that was on my list of goals yet again. I am not certain what my own endgame with the agent hunt is; I need to come up with a book idea that is commercially viable for an agent to want to represent, and that isn’t easy. Most of my book-writing decisions were made, not with an eye toward the commercial, but with an eye toward I want to see if I can write this story. Was that the smartest path to take as a writer? Perhaps not. I don’t know what’s commercial. The manuscript I was using to try to get an agent never worked as a cohesive story for me, and in this past year I finally realized why; I was trying to make a story into something it wasn’t. If I ever write what I was calling the WIP but is in reality ‘the Kansas book’, I have to write it as I originally intended it, not as what I am trying to make it into. And that’s something that is going to have to go onto the goal list for 2019.

On that note, I am heading back into the spice mines. Have a happy New Year, everyone.

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Perfect Way

I submitted a story to Cemetery Dance yesterday, and felt very accomplished after having done so. As I have said before, getting a story published in Cemetery Dance is a bucket list item for me, and I am reasonably proud of the story; we’ll see what happens. But I’m glad I did it; glad I spent the morning and early afternoon revising and polishing it. And hopefully,  if they don’t use the story I’ll get a chance to submit to them again at some point.

To celebrate, I went to the gym and did cardio, continuing my iPad screening of Troy: Fall of a City–which is starting to, sadly get a little boring. I’ll keep watching, though–I want to see how they play the story out, plus it’s helping me with my pronunciation of all their names; most of which I’ve been saying wrong my entire life, since I was a kid and read The Windy Walls of Troy.

I also spent some time last night with my journals; basically going through them and marking the pages where I wrote notes on the Scotty book, which should make the next revision much easier. Huzzah! I am also glad that I did this because not only did I find some ideas for short stories I’d forgotten, as well as how some of the short stories I have written since the first of the year were born, but I also discovered that I had roughly sketched out a couple of scenes for Bury Me in Satin, which I typed up last night–remember, I’d started writing the opening on the 4th, but was incredibly pleased to see that I’d actually handwritten not only the opening but some other scenes from the first and second chapter that needed to be transcribed. So, I am pretty far ahead on this one already, which is kind of awesome. I’m having lunch today with a friend, which will be lovely, and then I am going to run a couple of errands before coming home and doing some more writing.

I may even (gasp) return to the gym for the third consecutive day: madness.

I also spent part of the day reading about the Dreyfus Affair in Barbara Tuchman’s book The Proud Tower, which takes a look at life and the issues confronting the great powers from 1895-1914; basically, the set-up for World War I. I’d heard of the Dreyfus Affair, of course, and Emile Zola’s participation; but I didn’t know the entire story, and, well, you really can’t go wrong with reading Barbara Tuchman on a subject you want to know about.  I love reading history, and I always make a point of trying to read some around the 4th of July (I also took down Catherine Drinker Bowen’s history of the Constitutional Convention Miracle at Philadelphia, which should be required reading for all Americans); Tuchman is the kind of historian I would have liked to have been, writing the kinds of things I would have liked to have written had my career path gone in that direction (I still toy with The Monstrous Regiment of Women, a history of the sixteenth century, built around all the women who held power–more women held power in that century than any before or since). The Dreyfus Affair was really something, and even more horrific, in many ways that time in France is reflected in modern day American society as well.

The next story in Promises in Every Star and Other Stories is “The Porn King and I”:

He is beautiful.

He is everything I want in a lover.

Thick curly black hair.

Blue eyes.

Muscles rippling under tan skin.

A hard, round, beautiful ass.

The cock of Apollo.

I first saw him in a poster in the adult book store on Decatur Street. The poster was black with just a picture of him, hands on hips, wearing a jock strap. His face was smiling, a warm, inviting smile that would melt anyone’s heart and stir their groin. His tanned skin gleamed. At the bottom of the poster in red capital letters it said: CODY DALLAS IN THE SEX SENSE. I stood, staring for a few moments, my glance going from that pretty face down the neck to the beautifully shaped chest, smooth and silky, down the abs that looked carved out of stone, to the top of the jock. His hard-on was unmistakable beneath the white cloth. I walked over to the counter. “Do you have that film?” I pointed back over my shoulder with my thumb.

The counter boy was just that; a boy. He didn’t look old enough to be working in a sex shop. Hell, he didn’t look old enough to have hair on his balls. Bleached blonde hair standing up spikily over black roots. A straggle of hair on his chin that was supposed to be a goatee. He weighed maybe 130 pounds. His baggy jeans hung off his hips. A black Marilyn Manson t-shirt. Pierced nose and eyebrow. Tattoos on both arms. He grinned at me. Braces.

“Yeah. Only $59.95 or did you want to rent?”

“I’ll buy.”

I walked home to my apartment on Chartres Street. Opened the door. Switched on the television with the remote. Opened the box and popped the video in. Hit play as I pull off my shirt, kick off shoes, strip naked. Reach underneath the couch for the fresh bottle of poppers and the lube. Fast forward through the opening credits. First scene.

It’s him. He is wearing Daisy Dukes and work boots. No shirt. The sun glistens on the muscles in his back. He is trimming a bush with garden clippers. Every movement he makes causes muscles to ripple. Someone is watching from the house. Behind the curtains a face appears. Cut away to from behind the curtains. He looks beautiful, oh so beautiful. Camera pulls back. The man at the window is naked. Thinner. Not as muscled as Cody. Lean wiry muscle.

Cody looks up at the window and smiles. The man in the window beckons. Cody puts the clippers down and walks to the door. It opens.

I open the bottle of poppers. My eyes are glued to the screen. I lift it up to my right nostril. I close off the left and start inhaling. Deeply. The scent fills my nose, my sinuses, my lungs. I shift it to the other nostril. Inhale.

“The Porn King and I” was, ironically, inspired by something that actually happened; I was walking into the Quarter on a warm early summer evening. I walked past a house right on the sidewalk with its enormous windows open–anyone could have climbed into the house; something that has always amazed me about the Quarter and those that live there–and on the wall was a framed and mounted poster of a porn star (I do not recall, all these years later, precisely which porn star it was; I am thinking Kris Lord but that might be wrong). It inspired a story about a lonely man who talks to the poster, like it’s real, and eventually there’s a scene where a young man catches him talking to the poster, climbs in through the window, and they have nasty hot passionate sex. When I was asked to write this story for one of the Best Gay Erotica volumes, I stripped out the poster and the guy walking by on the street, leaving the main character’s obsession with a porn star, and renting the video from Tower Videos on Decatur Street (which is, sadly, no longer there); the sex scene thus became three-sided: there’s the main character watching the video and masturbating; what he’s imagining in his head as he masturbates; and, of course, what is actually happening on the television screen. I thought it was a clever take.

And the stuff I stripped out? I eventually used in a story about a lonely guy who lives in the Quarter and how a gorgeous young man talks to him through the window, and what transpires then. The story was called “Mr. Lonely” and was published in the original Saints and Sinners anthology.

And now, back to the spice mines.

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We Don’t Need Another Hero

Monday morning; the typical post-Festival weekend exhaustion. I am so tired this morning, but what a lovely weekend of talking to people and reconnecting with friends and listening to smart people talk. It’s so wonderful to get to listen to smart people talk about books, especially, and politics and being queer and writing. The weekend was a whirlwind, and not being as young as I used to be, I am more tired and drained than I used to be afterwards. But it was a glorious experience, as always, I have some new books to read and new writers to read and my mind is all a-whirl this morning; too many thoughts to really put into words this morning. I definitely am inspired to write again, which, having rediscovered how much I actually love to do it, is wonderful.

I am still waiting for all the Amazon updating to take place on my new story, “Quiet Desperation”, my first-ever ebook single, or Kindle Short, or whatever the hell it’s called; I am very excited about this as a way to get my short stories out there from now on. Will anyone buy or read them? Maybe not, but at least I know that if people want to, they can. I know there are a lot of issues–and legitimate ones–that people have with Amazon, but if Amazon is making it possible for writers to make even a little bit of money for short stories, maybe it’s possible for Amazon to revive the form and more people will write them. My appreciation for the short story has obviously grown exponentially with the Short Story Project this year, and all the short story writing I’ve actually been doing. I really am pleased with “Quiet Desperation” and how it turned out; as I said yesterday, I read a piece of it on Saturday to the audience and everyone seemed to like it, and formatter extraordinaire Erin Mitchell also seemed to like it. It’s not for everyone, of course; nothing is, and of course I am not thinking oh I am going to sell thousands of copies of this. I’m not crazy, even if I am a dreamer; I’m a little too pragmatic to think that way. But…it’s always fun to try something new, and now that I am writing again, it’s also time to think about the business side of things as well.

But today is about getting over the weekend, and recovering, and getting mu equilibrium back. I don’t remember what I was working on before the weekend started–I know I revised some short stories last week; not really sure which ones, and I think I am going to start finalizing that short story collection and get back to working on Scotty again. I am going to have to go over what’s already written and done on it because I can’t remember where I was and what was happening and where it was going because I’ve been away from it for so long, but I want to get this all under control and harness all this writing energy I have again and put it to good use.

And on that note I am going back to the spice mines.

 

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Obsession

I’ve slept well this entire weekend, which is mostly unusual, but lovely. I generally don’t sleep well during conference/festival weekends; and yet here I am. I’ll be walking down to the Quarter later for my genre panel at Saints and Sinners; then watching some other panels before the closing. It’s always so lovely listening to smart people talk. Yesterday’s highlights, for me, were the Baby Boomer Lesbians panel with Judith Katz, Jewelle Gomez, and Elana Dykewomon; listening to the wisdom of our lesbian elders is absolutely wonderful. This was followed by a great panel on LGBTQ rights, the movement for equality and where we currently stand; it was invigorating, and reminded me that we, as writers, whether we want to or not, do have responsibilities to our community and society. We as queer writers have a particular responsibility; we tend to forget that everything we write, by virtue of who we are as a marginalized people the mainstream tends to try to make invisible, is ultimately political.

I also read from “Quiet Desperation” yesterday; merely a fragment, no more than a few minutes, but the audience reacted perfectly to it, which pleases me to no end. I am very pleased with this story, and can’t wait to make everyone fully aware of it as soon as the revised file is available.

I’m starting to feel excited about writing again; looking forward to the challenges of finishing novels, writing short stories, doing edits, getting shit done, you know? It’s lovely; I can’t tell you how much better I feel and how incredibly awesome this year has been so far already. Self-care is optimal, and I need to remember that; I also need to remember that when it becomes a slog…that talking to other writers about writing is always the tonic that works. Probably in the future I should look into writing events and schedule attendance at one every quarter, so I get my reinvigoration on a regular basis.

All right, I am going to get some things done around here before it’s time to head down to the Quarter.

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