Tag: Satan

Galveston

Thursday and last day of work before my trip. I didn’t sleep that great last night–lots of tossing and turning and waking up, and for some ungodly reason Sparky decided I should get up at four–and then hassled and harassed me until I finally got up before six. I don’t feel tired–that may change, of course– and actually kind of good this morning. I didn’t have anything to bring for lunch, so I guess I will be ordering for delivery again. It’ll be a nice treat for myself, and of course tonight I’ll have to spoil Sparky before I take him to board at the Cat Practice. I hate boarding him; I always worry he thinks he’s being abandoned again. Hang in there, little guy! We’ll pick you up Wednesday afternoon.

Well, this Supreme Court continues to prove themselves disgusting pigs and traitors who make Roger P. Taney look like a fucking amateur. All I will say is: you know who you are, you know what you did MORE THAN ONCE, and I will forgive MAGA before I forgive you. I hope you’re proud of yourselves. Hope your moral superiority is worth it.

You have no idea, Constant Reader, how glad I am that I am old.

I was kind of tired when I got home from work yesterday, but I forced myself to do some chores around trying to get my Youtube algorithm un-fucked-up with; yet another reason algorithms should be done away with because they are of Satan. As I have mentioned, I’ve been watching the insane bread-and-circus of this idiotic political movement eating itself alive. I’ve started calling this whole mess The Real Housewives of MAGA. Kristi and Pam have been fired from the cast, but not soon enough; may the rest of their lives be as ignominious and hateful as they deserve. Yet Laura Loomer, Candace, and Erika rage on. I despise all three of them, but watching them meltdown and come for each other can be highly entertaining. I generally watch updates on RHOMAGA from more leftist influencers, but sometimes I won’t be paying full attention, and before I can stop it Youtube autoplays the next video…and sometimes it’s an actual video from one of these three little pigs. This fucks up my algorithms, and as a result Youtube was offering me right-wing content more so than ever before. It could also be that someone there rejiggered said algorithms to push right-wing content. It’s so much fun living in a world where you cannot discern fact from fiction on the news. Sigh. Again, I am very glad I am old.

I’m proud of myself for getting the dishes done and the dishwasher run last night around watching documentaries on Youtube. I saw an absolutely fascinating one on the White Hurricane on the great lakes, which sounded like it was horrible. The video primarily focused on the lakes and the conditions; many ships were out there before they knew how big the storm was getting or how fast it was going. I am assuming that Michigan and other surrounding areas also got hit pretty hard. I’m planning on looking up more information on it. More than 250 people were killed on the lakes by the storm, and yes, apparently the surrounding areas were battered, too. Imagine a massive blizzard with hurricane force winds. Sounds pretty fucking terrifying to me, frankly.

I need to make a packing list for the trip tomorrow; I let Paul take the good suitcase so I am going to have to find something to take with me. I’d rather not take the big suitcase, but I may just go ahead and do so there will be room for everything instead of shoving things into overstuffed gym bags. I also have to run an errand on the way home tonight; I should go uptown and get the mail. I’ve been avoiding doing this after work because driving uptown on Claiborne is such a damned nightmare; but I have a prescription I need to get and so I may as well stop by the mail too; I also need to pick up my copy of Jordan Harper’s new book. I’ve got Alafair’s latest queued up on Audible to listen to in the car on the way up tomorrow. But it’s also supposed to rain this afternoon, and bearing that in mind, I may wait to go uptown until tomorrow and after I drop Sparky off. That actually makes the most sense; load up the car, take Sparky to the vet, and go uptown and then head down Claiborne to I-10.

And on that note, I am heading into the spice mines. Have a lovely Thursday, Constant Reader, and I’ll be back tomorrow before I head out. Till then!

I highly recommend the Bloody Mary’s at Commanders Palace.

World Turning

It’s interesting how stories come to fruition; everything I write has an origin story, and my story in Chesapeake Crimes: Magic is Murder is no exception.

Ironically, “The Snow Globe” began as a Halloween story, believe it or not, rather than the Christmas story it actually turned out to be. The inspiration came to me on a Halloween night–actual Halloween, not gay Halloween–I think in either 2003 or 2004. I was out in the French Quarter by myself for some reason–that reason is lost in the mists of time, but it must have been 2004; Paul wasn’t quite comfortable yet being out and about in crowds just yet, so I wound up spending Decadence and Halloween and pretty much any time I went out back then by myself, meeting up with friends (the real life inspiration for Scotty’s friend David, for you Scotty readers out there). Anyway, this particular Halloween I wore a wrestler’s singlet that I’d borrowed from my friend Not-David. He was smaller than me but back then I was also pretty small; I weighed somewhere between 170 and 180 and wore 30 waist pants; everything I wore was a small (my shirts were mediums) but I’d forgotten how tight singlets actually are; a small male singlet fit me like second skin, and of course, I wasn’t wearing anything underneath (I got a lot of attention that night in the bars). Anyway, I was waiting for my friends and was standing on the balcony of the Pub/Parade, nursing a bottle of Bud Lite and watching the street–seriously, actual Halloween is primarily for locals, everyone wears a costume, and it’s a lot of fun–when someone walked out the door of Oz, across the street, wearing a devil costume.

He had on a mask, had the horns and tail–but all he was wearing was a skimpy red bikini and a lot of red body paints. He was wearing stiletto boots that looked like hooves (except for the stiletto part) and his body was amazing, and I literally thought, Satan has a great six-pack. This made me laugh, and I thought, that’s a great opening for a Halloween story.

I did make a note of the line in a journal, and never forgot it.

Flash forward a decade or so and HWA was doing a Halloween-themed horror anthology, and I thought my Satan has a great six-pack story would work perfectly for it. I worked on it–was also writing a book at the same time–and sadly, never finished it. Flash forward another two years and there was a hilarious thread on Facebook–I do not recall what it was about or how it started, but it eventually devolved into someone suggesting an anthology called War on Christmas in which every story took a kind of Hallmark Christmas movie trope and tweaked into something dark. Someone mentioned a magical snow globe in one of the films, I replied “Oh I want to do the story about Satan’s snow globe!”

And I realized that just changing one letter in Satan turned it into Santa, and I could use that opening sentence yet again. I love when that happens.

Santa, Dylan thought, certainly has a great six-pack.

He smiled as he leaned against the bar, watching the so-called Santa with a slight smile. He definitely wasn’t your average department store Santa, that was for sure.

The guy’s body was thickly–almost impossibly– muscled and perfectly proportioned. His biceps and shoulders were thick, every muscle cord and fiber etched and carved beneath his smooth, tanned skin. The cleavage between his big chest was deep, his nipples like purplish quarters. It didn’t seem possible for his waist to be so small, and the crevices between his abdominal muscles were deep enough for a finger to fit between up to the first knuckle.  His legs were powerful and strong, ropy bulging veins pushing against the silky skin.

Like a traditional Santa his face was hidden behind the obligatory long white wig and the thick white beard and mustache—but that was his only bow to tradition. Rather than a red suit with white trim and a big black belt, he simply wore a very small bikini of crushed red velvet with glittery red sequins trimmed around the waist and legs with green faux fur.  Large brass rings exposing pale skin connected the front to the back. His red boots sparkled with red sequins and glitter, trimmed at the top with green velvet. Slung over his right shoulder was a red velvet bag, also trimmed with green faux fur.  Every movement he made as he talked to a group of young twinks with poufy hair and obscenely slim hips caused muscles to bulge and flex somewhere.

He knew he was staring but didn’t care.

Dylan wasn’t drunk. Well, maybe just a wee bit tipsy.  He was nursing his third beer since getting to the party a little after eight, but  about an hour ago the bartenders had poured free shots of some sort of tequila about an hour earlier. It had burned and made his eyes water—definitely not the best tequila.

The idea of a cursed snow globe really appealed to me, and since I’d only gotten about two paragraphs into the Halloween story, changing it to Christmas was easy; it actually even made more sense as a Christmas story as opposed to a Halloween story (and, truth be told, I had always hated the title I was using for it as a Halloween story; “The Snow Globe” is a much better title). The War on Christmas anthology chose to not use the story, but the editor gave me incredible feedback–primarily, I had played down the magic/voodoo aspects of the story, which were actually it’s strongest and most interesting point–in all honesty, I was hesitant to use voodoo as a dark force in the story; it’s clichéd, at the very least, and the last thing I wanted to do was add to the confusion of what voodoo actually is–but the ‘curse’ in the story is about vengeance, and every religion has both a light or “good” side and a dark or “bad” side.

Plus, I had always wanted to write about Baron Samedi, and here was a chance.

So, when I got the call for submissions for Magic is Murder, I thought, hey, here’s a place you send “The Snow Globe” too after you revise it per the editor’s notes! Needless to say, I was enormously flattered and pleased when the story was chosen.

I do like the story a lot; it’s always fun to write about snow in New Orleans (yes, it starts snowing in the story) and it was also kind of fun to write about an older gay man for a change; a single guy in his fifties who has started feeling his age and is. well, lonely.

And really, can you ever go wrong with a stripper Santa?

You can order the book here if you like, or you can order it from your local independent (always your best choice, really).