Tag: Scotty

Die Another Day

At some point, with all the book -bans and censorship that’s going on, I am going to have to recap and go over my own experience with being banned; but that will require logic, rational thought and revisiting my blog entries from that period to refresh my memory. Yesterday I got political on here for the first time in a long time, and you know–it kind of felt good to get that out of my system and into the public sphere. I do feel very complicit for not speaking out sooner, but…I’ve always worried, more so after turning fifty, that my opinions might cause trouble for others I am associated with; I work at a non-profit for one, and of course, I had a very long volunteer service ‘career’ with Mystery Writers of America. It was probably at least nine years of service all told; and I didn’t want anyone claiming I was speaking for MWA (particularly when I was serving as Executive Vice President) when I was expressing myself personally; nor did I want anything I might say or do to reflect poorly on the organization–or have my words used against it in any way. As EVP, I was one of only two people authorized to speak for the organization publicly; and that last year after pandemic restrictions were lifted I traveled a lot, representing the organization at several conferences and events. And even though I personally knew where the lines were drawn and what was and wasn’t separate, I couldn’t count on other people to keep or recognize those same distinctions…and I was far too busy with everything to willingly risk more things to have to deal with by opening my mouth on here. That’s part of the reason I dialed that all back–along with the “preaching to the choir” element–but yesterday morning I realized you don’t have to be careful about what you say publicly anymore and it was incredibly liberating. So yes, I will sometimes be taking on things that I feel strongly about and not keeping my mouth shut the way I have for so long. (In my narcissistic hubris, I also sort of blame myself for the state of the world right now because I kept my mouth shut for so long.) Besides, if you read this blog or my books (hopefully both), it should be readily apparent that politically I am basically a Jacobin–albeit one who understands how our government runs and functions and how it is supposed to work…which some people serving in Washington don’t seem to know, which is odd. Surely the ones in my age group had to take Government or Civics in high school? I don’t see how they could have passed it, but here we are.

So be prepared, Constant Reader. There’s a lengthy tome coming on the Virginia Incident.

But I finished editing the manuscript I was working on (not one of my own) last evening and sent it back to the author, and I can breathe. I have a ZOOM call scheduled with my editor, so we can talk out all the issues and scheduling for Mississippi River Mischief, which I am actually itching to get back to work on. I think I’ll take today and tomorrow as free days from writing, and then I will jump back into the book on Sunday. I want to do it the way I always do my editing and revisions; by chapter as opposed to entire manuscript, which is what I had been doing and I think this change of work habits, on top of the depression and everything else, made it impossible for me to get the book finished. I don’t think I’ll get it done by the end of May, but surely I can get it finished by mid-June, and then can move back to Chlorine–which will also require me going over and revising the opening chapters again so I can get the voice down again. I am also going to go back to my chapter-per-week project I was working on before my life blew up late last year, and I feel marvelous about everything. I feel very excited about this, and about getting back to writing again. This hasn’t been the best year for me thus far, really, and I also need to stop thinking oh I need to understand why I feel like this or trying to deconstruct everything in some kind of pseudo-psychological processing. My mother died after a slow, lengthy decline, at an extremely difficult time for me professionally. I need to stop feeling guilty about grieving, or being unable to do anything because of depression. Of course I am experiencing some depression; I’d have to be inhuman not to feel anything. And like with all previous traumas, I am learning to navigate grief as I go–although maybe I should read Joan Didion’s The Year of Magical Thinking–and like all previous traumas, it creates a bipolar existence where one day you are fine and the next you’re back in the pit of despair. Sometimes the day will start out great and will flip as it goes on. I have nothing wise or profound to say about loss or grief; although there is something to be said about the numb emotional deadening the HIV/AIDS crisis brought in its wake. I would never want to be that zombie-like ever again, drifting through the days waiting to hear someone else is in the hospital, someone else has died, and there’s another funeral in a few days–but I also have to start recognizing, at this great advanced age, that I’ve never processed or dealt with that time either. (It’s a Sin was a strong reminder of that very thing. I was also thinking Longtime Companion deserves a revisit; it’s always been hard to watch for me, but the beach scene at the end always makes me sob. I’ve also been thinking about the literature of the plague; has anyone ever compiled a list of the classic HIV/AIDS writings? There’s a thesis for a grad student.)

Last night I slept like a log; the sleep of the righteous for finally finishing that editing job. I feel great this morning–rested and relaxed. I do have some work at home duties to accomplish today, and the kitchen is a complete disaster area. I have decided that I am going to finish reading Lori Roy’s Let Me Die in His Footsteps (which is fucking brilliant in every way), as well as reread the openings of the Scotty books this weekend, to see if I can get his voice back into my brain–I feel like that’s the big problem in Mississippi River Mischief–I haven’t nailed the voice and tone in any of the drafts yet, so I need to re-familiarize myself with Scotty’s voice and his wicked, wicked ways. I am actually excited about getting reacquainted with him. This is our ninth outing together, and I always wonder with each one if this is the last or not. I think there’s at least two more Scottys within the reaches of my brain–Hurricane Party Hustle and Quarter Quarantine Quadrille for sure–but you never know what is going to happen next and what may come along your road to write from out of nowhere. I’d like to get both Chlorine and Muscles finished this year, as well as the novellas, and maybe a short story collection by the end of the year. I have also been thinking that one thing that is missing from the annals of New Orleans (or Louisiana, for that matter) crime fiction is the environmental novel. John D. MacDonald deplored what politicians and greedy developers were doing to the tropical paradise of Florida, and slipped that social commentary into almost every Travis McGee novel and many of his stand alones (Barrier Island comes to mind). Louisiana has been in an environmental crisis for decades, and yet no one ever writes about the eroding coastline, the greed of the oil companies and the politicians they buy and pay for every year; Cancer Alley along the river between Baton Rouge and New Orleans being a hotbed of toxic waste; and of there was the Bayou Corne sinkhole a few years ago. I don’t know that I have the knowledge or the time to do the necessary research to write such things, but it’s something someone needs to write. And you know what I always say–if you think someone should write it, that someone should be you.

For me, though, the problem with research is how do you stop from going down wormholes and wasting days? Where do you draw the line, and when do you know you’ve done enough? As Constant Reader knows, I can never get enough of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries of European history; I can spend days in wormholes of research about politics and wars and the powerful; it was an interesting time–when white Europeans began their colonization of the world, when Christianity had it’s huge splintering that led to war after war after war, the Hapsburgs continuing to expand their empire by marrying it, and on and on and on. Remarkable female leaders proliferated in the sixteenth century more than perhaps any other century before or since; which makes the sixteenth a bit more interesting than the seventeenth. The seventeenth interests me because it was the century when the world empires continued to grow and oppress natives around the globe, but it was also the time of the rise of the modern state, when the political games became more about state power rather than faith or old inheritance claims–when politics became more about the country than the King’s whims. I also go down New Orleans and Louisiana history wormholes a lot, too. I will never have the time to write everything I want to write, or research history enough to write about it. I really, for example, want to write about the German Coast rebellion of the enslaved; I want to write about Freniere, Louisiana being wiped off the map; and I want to write more historical stories set in New Orleans.

And I want to write a romance. I had that on my list of projects for this year, but then everything blew up in my face and my control over the year slipped right out of my fingers. But even though it’s mid to late May, it’s not too late to salvage the rest of the year from the wreckage of the first five months.

And on that note, I’m heading into the spice mines. Have a lovely Friday, Constant Reader, and I will check in which you again later or tomorrow.

Deeper and Deeper

Tuesday morning. I slept decently last night, which was lovely, but I did want to stay in bed rather than spring forth from under the covers wide awake and ready to face the day. I mean, I’m not worried about facing the day, but man, I’d rather be back in bed under the covers.

I did make some progress on the book yesterday; every drib and drab helps get me closer to the goal line, so I am taking that as a win-win-win for now. I wasn’t terribly tired when I got home from the office yesterday, either. We started watching The Watchful Eye last night, which is interesting and is obviously from the Only Murders in the Building school of thrillers. There’s all kinds of stuff going on in this building, mostly concerning the family who originally built the building and members of which still live there–and spy on each other and manipulate each other and yeah, it most definitely held our interest until it was time to go to bed. It’s not the greatest thing I’ve ever seen, and it does somewhat come across as a bit derivative (exclusive apartment building in Manhattan filled with rich people! Crime! Money!) but it’s entertaining enough. There seem to be several different storylines running, and trying to keep track of them before they are introduced is a bit of a challenge; apparently our main character, the new nanny, has lied and faked her resume to get the job because for some reason she needs to be in the building. She is working with her boyfriend, who also happens to be a cop, but we don’t find out what that’s about until the second episode. There also appear to be ghosts (or at least one) in the building, too–so it’s maybe kind of a cross between Only Murders in the Building and maybe Rosemary’s Baby?

Overall, yesterday was a good day, I think. I am hoping for a good week, after a bad weekend. I was a little mopey last night, not gonna lie about it, but not as bad as I was over the weekend. I also didn’t get much progress on the book done yesterday either, but what I did was good–it’s interesting how uninspired I can feel and yet still do really good work; I was thinking about this last night actually–how I have really not felt particularly inspired and how the writing itself has felt like drudgery now for going on several years, and yet I am still producing what is probably the best work of my life in this stage of it. How peculiar is that? My last four books (Royal Street Reveillon, Bury Me in Shadows, #shedeservedit, and A Streetcar Named Murder) are works that I am particularly proud of; I am sure at some point when this fucking Scotty I am currently fighting my way through is finished I’ll probably wind up proud of it too–although at the moment that is impossible to imagine or conceive. Some of the short stories I’ve done during this period are also ones of which I am inordinately proud–I am really looking forward to “Solace in a Dying Hour” seeing the light of day in the anthology This Fresh Hell. Go figure, right? I am doing my best work when I am not enjoying doing it? That sounds about like the story of my life, to be sure.

I went down an Internet wormhole over the past few days involving one of my favorite characters from history, Catherine de Medici Queen of France. I’ve always been interested in her and that particular period of French history: the dying out of the Valois branch of the ruling dynasty and the Wars of Religion that sundered France, and especially have always been interested in her Flying Squadron (l’Escadron volant); beautiful women she had trained in the art of conversation and seduction whose primary function was to bed the Queen’s enemies and spy on them, reporting back to her. I’ve always thought it would be interesting to write from the perspective of one of those women–intrigue! Suspense! Danger! Who is a Spanish spy, and who is an English spy? Who is a Huguenot and who is working for the Pope? The French court was rife with intrigue and conspiracy in that period, which would be so much fun to write about.

I still would like to write that popular history of the sixteenth century focusing on all the women who held power in that century, which I would be more than willing to go out on a limb and say was more commonplace in that century than in any other, before or since. (What can I say? When I am down and in the dumps, as I have been these past few days, Internet wormholes about periods of history that fascinate me draw me like honey draws bees) I’ve even been thinking about the introduction to it lately; it’s been in my mind. The more rabbit holes about the sixteenth century I go down the more it interests me, you know?

And on that note, I am heading into the spice mines. I hope you have a lovely Tuesday, Constant Reader, and I will check back in with you again tomorrow.

Who’s that Girl?

Wednesday and it’s Pay the Bills day again! Woo-hoo!

I didn’t sleep all that great Monday night, so felt a little tired all day. Mentally I was fine, but it was another one of those oh you’re body feels tired and wants to curl up and go back to sleep–which was what I’d avoided all day Monday only to have the night be restless for me. It’s okay, of course; there are always worse things that could have happened (like not sleeping at all) but it wasn’t exactly terribly motivating, you know? I got all my day job work caught up, which was great, but had a ZOOM meeting last night at six pm after I got home, so didn’t get a whole lot done other than that. But I did get all my tax stuff turned over to my accountant–we may need to file an extension, which is fine; this is all my fault for blanking on my income taxes–which was a lovely and much needed thing.

That was a very close call, frankly.

I slept much better last night. I feel very rested this morning, both physically and mentally, so here’s hoping for high productivity day, shall we? I stopped on my way home last night to pick up more ink for my printer–it’s weird how I go through the other colors much faster than black; I have two black cartridges I’ve not used yet from having to replace the colored ink; yesterday I discovered I can simply buy the colored ink separately without a black cartridge–which means it happens more frequently than i would have thought–that black and the other colors never run out at the same time. I suppose you can also buy them individually; I just always bought the more expensive all colors pack. Live and learn, things are getting a bit easier, wouldn’t you say?

I have all the background materials prepared so tonight will begin the official revision of the final draft of the new Scotty book. I have to admit, I’ve been thinking a lot lately about ending the Scotty series. What? I know, I know, I figured I’d be writing about Scotty until the day I die. But I am beginning to think the series is a bit played out; what else is there for him to do, explore, realize about himself and the world? I don’t know. The writing has been very difficult–not just for Scotty–ever since the pandemic started. Not that it’s over by any means–looks like there’s yet another new strain out there, at least I saw some news reports yesterday about it, at any rate. But I think and hope that once I get this one finished and out of my hair, going back to writing something new from scratch will be a lot more fun than writing has been since 2020.

We watched Yellowjackets last night–I really love Melanie Lynskey–and this week’s episode of Ted Lasso, which feels like it’s getting back to what it really is after an interesting start to this final season. I do love the show, just as I did Schitt’s Creek, but I’m not completely obsessed by it, the way some people on Twitter appear to be; they seem to have watched every episode shot by shot, frame by frame, and then indexed it all so they can refer to it with each new episode that drops? I mean, it’s cool–I used to be obsessed with television shows (soaps in particular) but maybe not to this extent? I think streaming makes these kinds of obsessions easier than it used to be; you used to have to record everything on a videotape, which would gradually wear out with repeated watchings and before that–well, I don’t know what people used to do before the Internet other than watched shows as they aired and took voluminous notes? I suspect people didn’t used to get as obsessed with television shows and films the way they do now because it wasn’t possible–although I suppose Star Trek was the first show to really get people obsessed. Not an expert on television history, I’m afraid, nor of its impact and influence on culture and our society as a whole.

It really is amazing how much better I feel this morning. It’s amazing what a good night’s sleep can do for you, isn’t it? I’m hoping I’m not tired when I run my errands after work tonight–I need to make some groceries and get the mail, then come home and do some chores (finishing the laundry, emptying the dishwasher in order to reload it again–before I can sit down and work on the book some more and then we need to find something new to watch; but I have found a bunch of shows that look interesting–crime stories, natch–so we can start giving those a try. I also want to prune down the books a bit more, and see if I can’t get some of this junk out of the living room. I’ve always preferred open space in my home, to give the illusion of it being a larger space, so of course the living room is completely cluttered and has stuff shoved into every crack, crevice, and space where something can possibly go, and I don’t like that feeling, frankly. (It’s also why I worry about moving into a bigger space–more space to fill with clutter and things.)

Heavy heaving sigh.

And on that note, I am heading into the spice mines. Have a lovely Wednesday, Constant Reader, and I will check in with you tomorrow.

La Isla Bonita

Sliding into Tuesday like it’s nobody’s business and here we go!

I managed to start gathering everything to send to my accountant last night, which was nice. It wasn’t as difficult to calculate my expenses this past year as it has been in previous years; I don’t know what exactly that says about my writing career but there you have it. I felt pretty groggy for most of the day, like I never really woke up to begin with, but it wasn’t a bad day by any means; I just kind of felt like I was sleepwalking through most of it, to be honest. I ran errands when I got off from work, and then I came home and worked on the tax stuff. I”ll finish it this morning before I leave for work, will double check it all over lunch, and hopefully get it all sent in. Huzzah. Then I came home where we finished off The Last of Us, which we both really enjoyed. It was a bit colder yesterday than I was expecting–I was cold all day at the office, which means a long-sleeved sweater is in the offing today, because today is going to be colder than yesterday (well aware that cold is relative; the high today is forecast for 69 degrees, which is cold here for April, sue me). Because I was gathering the taxes, and went straight from that to The Last of Us, I didn’t get to spend any time with Scorched Grace last night, which was a pity. Perhaps tonight.

I feel like I slept well last night, even though I kept waking up. I don’t feel groggy this morning, or that weird thing like yesterday where my body is groggy but my mind is alert. My coffee is good this chilly morning in my windows, but it’s fine. I need to get ink for my printer on my way home from the office tonight (hurray); I don’t understand how the colored ink has now run out twice before the black, when 90% of what I print is from Word documents…in black and white. But there you have it, you know. Tomorrow is pay-the-bills day, too; which means a morning spent trying to get all the bills paid. My financial fortunes are turning around–I still owe far too much money, though–but I am gradually, slowly and surely getting there. I’m hoping that by the end of the year I will be making significant progress in paying down my debt. That’s one of the goals for the year, and I am definitely hoping that it continues the way it’s going.

Tonight I am going to start tearing into the revision of Mississippi River Mischief. It definitely needs work, make no mistake about that, but I am not as overawed by it as I was originally–because of course I hate everything I write and am always convinced it’s a steaming pile of crap. It is–there’s a lot to be cleaned up, plot holes to fill, bad writing to clean up and try to make sing–a mess, to be sure, but it’s fixable; everything is always fixable. We also will probably get caught up on some of the other shows we watch–I like that we get Ted Lasso a day early–after I finish my work and do some more of the chores around the house that need doing (my kitchen is an utter disaster area, and I want to make chicken salad), and of course, there are always odds and ends around the kitchen that need filing or put away. I am going to have an insane writing schedule, because I want to get this finished before I leave for Malice Domestic on April 17th, which only gives me a couple of weeks to get this under control. But big pushes on the weekends should do the trick. I have a staff meeting this Friday morning, which means getting up earlier than I would prefer and being out among the rest of the living long before I probably should be, but such is life. I can also run errands after the meeting on my way home as well, which is pretty cool–getting them out of the way, at any rate–and here’s hoping for a super-productive weekend where I will make amazing and significant progress on the manuscript, will finish Scorched Grace and start reading whatever is next in the TBR pile, where there are an awful lot of good things waiting for me.

Which is lovely, of course. It’s always nice when you have a pile of lovely books to choose one from for your reading pleasure. And of course, I am volumes behind on some series I enjoy as well as some authors of whom I am a huge fan. (Looking at you, Mary Russell!) I am kind of looking forward to getting this book finished and being able to breathe without a deadline for a while; of course I’ll be working on something else, but there’s no need for killing myself to make a deadline, either. I was actually reflecting last night about my rereads of Never Kiss a Stranger and Festival of the Redeemer–both of which are closer to being finished than I actually had believed before diving into the reread. I could even use Festival of the Redeemer to close out my short story collection–it’s always nice to throw a 20k+ word count novella in at the end of a collection–but I think I would also rather wait and do the three-novellas-in-one thing my publisher had recommended. I do have four or five novellas on hand, so using one and then replacing it in the novella collection wouldn’t be an issue. I also have to edit Jackson Square Jazz at some point to get the ebook up and out.

Sigh. So much to do and so little time in which to do it all.

And on that note, I am heading into the spice mines. Y’all have a great Payday Eve (even if it isn’t your payday eve) and I will check in with you again tomorrow.

Open Your Heart

Monday after Easter Sunday, and I hope everyone had the kind of Sunday/holiday they needed to prepare them to head into this week full bore ahead.

The good news is that I reread Mississippi River Mischief yesterday and it most definitely is not the shitty mess I originally thought it was. It needs work, to be sure, but not nearly as much as I had feared, thank you Jesus, pass the ammunition, amen. The work isn’t going to be easy, either, but the framework can remain primarily intact with some reorganization and changing. (It didn’t help that I was rereading my manuscript after spending some time with Margot Douaihy’s brilliant debut, Scorched Grace, which is so good I am making notes of some of the sentences because they are so fucking smart; but I also wasn’t thinking rank amateur God how bad you suck at writing when there are people like Margot turning out such amazing work, which is saying something for me.) I also reread Festival of the Redeemer and Never Kiss a Stranger yesterday, and they aren’t bad, either. Maybe I don’t completely suck at this writing thing, who knows?

We spent most of yesterday bingeing The Last of Us, which is a really good show. I was reluctant for a long time–I’ve kind of had my fill of dystopian tales, although my fellow Americans don’t seem to feel the same way. But one can never go wrong with Pedro Pascal, and there was an episode where I said out loud, “this show is basically the same as The Mandalorian” and felt really smart. It’s very well done, though, and we’re obviously sucked heavily into it. The gay couple episode almost broke us both–so beautifully written and acted; so heart-wrenching and beautiful at the same time, maybe one of the most well done gay romance/love stories I’ve seen on either film or television–and I was sad last night when we had to turn it off because I had to go to bed. There are, of course, similarities to other dystopian stories like The Walking Dead and The Stand, but that’s only to be expected. I also was reminded of my own ideas for a dystopia, and reminded somewhat of Cormac McCarthy’s The Road (I have not read McCarthy, and felt a disclaimer was needed; but everyone knows the story of The Road).

I’ve always found it interesting that dystopic fiction is so popular, and have always wondered what precisely that says about our culture and society. I think my first dystopic fiction was the Planet of the Apes film series (I also read Pierre Boulle’s book, which the first film was very loosely based on), and the next was Richard Matheson’s novel I Am Legend and the movie loosely based on it, The Omega Man (interesting that the former and the latter both starred Charlton Heston). (I am a big fan of Matheson’s, who isn’t as known as he should be in my opinion; I feel the same way about Robert Bloch as well.) I myself have had ideas for dystopic fiction, as I mentioned before; I have several ideas about that I would love to try to write some time, but I am not so good at fantasy and science fiction (or at least it’s outside of my comfort zone because I don’t know anything much about science and especially not physics); which is why they were futuristic ones set in North America after the fall of the United States (which is the kind of alternative future story I love).

So. Many. Ideas.

But, basically I came away from the weekend feeling like I can get everything under control again; whether that is true or not remains to be seen. But I do know that I need to get back to work on the book, and work hard for a while. I need to get my taxes done and I need to get my emails answered. I’m looking forward to finishing Scorched Grace, which is absolutely amazing, and there’s still some cleaning that needs to be done around here. I managed to get most of the filing done so my desk area doesn’t look like a tornado zone, which is always a plus; just a few more things to file and put away and it’ll be almost completely under control. And the way things are going, I should even have a couple more completed manuscripts by the end of the summer! Woo-hoo!

And on that note, I am heading into the spice mines. You have a great day, Constant Reader, and I will check in with you again tomorrow.

Jumpin’ Jack Flash

He’s a gas, gas, gas!

Here we are on another gray weekend morning. It was supposed to rain off and on all day yesterday–it didn’t–but it turned out to be a pretty good day. I wrote about eight thousand words or so, give and take, and made groceries in the afternoon. I did take care of some chores around the Lost Apartment, too, and I spent some time yesterday morning with Other Horrors, which I should finish this morning as I only have three stories left. There have been a couple that puzzled me, but overall, I’ve enjoyed the collection for the most part. I’d be pressed to pick a favorite story, though. Reading it has again reminded me that I am not, no matter how much I wish I was, a horror writer. I just don’t have the imagination, I don’t think, to be a horror writer. I can write Gothic suspense–suspense stories with a touch of the supernatural in them, like Lake Thirteen and Bury Me in Shadows–but I just don’t have the kind of mind that goes to horror when I think about writing.

We also finished off That 90’s Show last night and started watching Mayfair Witches, an adaptation of Anne Rice’s Mayfair trilogy, beginning with my favorite of her novels, The Witching Hour. I am predisposed to like this, since I loved the book so much (the rest of the trilogy not so much), and of course I drove past the house they turned into the Mayfair house for filming on Prytania Street all the time. (They did not use the actual house at First and Chestnut; one thing I did have a problem with was the way they showed Dierdre’s porch, which was different on the actual house than how depicted on the show) There are two more episodes for us to get through tonight, which is cool. I slept extremely well last night again–it’s remarkable how well I’ve been sleeping since getting back from New York–and my psoriasis seems to be under control again for the first time in years. There are a few things I need from the grocery store, but I think I can safely put that off until tomorrow and can stop on the way home from work. This morning I did get up earlier than I wanted to–I am sleeping so well I could stay in bed all day without an issue, I think–but I eel good. My legs have finally stopped feeling sore and tired, thank God, and I think I can safely say that I have completely reacclimated to my day to day life again.

I’m still listening to the Hadestown score, but I also started listening to the Christine McVie-Lindsay Buckingham album the two recorded a few years ago, and it’s quite good. The harmonies! Although I can’t help but think two things while listening: first, I wish Lindsay Buckingham had produced one of her solo albums and second, the one thing missing is Stevie Nicks and this would have made an amazing Fleetwood Mac album, which I think was what it was originally intended to be but Stevie wasn’t available or something or another. It’s also sad to know there will never be another Fleetwood Mac album since Christine’s untimely passing last year (not with my favorite line-up, at any rate). I need to move her solo album from the 1980’s back into my rotation–it’s a great and always underrated record. It’s hard to imagine the band moving on without either Christine or Lindsay (whom they fired), and Stevie already has a band she tours with as a solo act…sigh. Fleetwood Mac was the soundtrack of my teens and twenties and it’s just very weird that it’s finally over after all these years for me. When I write about the 1970’s–which I probably will do either later this year or sometime next–it will indelibly have Fleetwood Mac music all over the score of my work.

When I finish this book, I have to spend February revising Mississippi River Mischief and should spend some time doing a massive copy edit of Jackson Square Jazz so I finally have all of the Scotty series for sale as ebooks at long last. Once I get that done, March will be spent revising the one I am writing now, and then finally come April I can get back to work on Chlorine at long last. I’d like to get a draft of it finished in April so I can write another first draft of something else in May (I already know what it is going to be) and then will probably spend the rest of the year writing short stories and novellas and revising everything to see what can happen with them. Next year I want to write yet another Scotty book and that’s when I am going to try to write my 1970’s Chicago suburb boys-are-disappearing novel, too. None of this is carved into stone tablets, either–things always come up along the way, new ideas or hey Greg want to write a book we’ll pay you xxx for it and I never ever say no to things like that. I’d also like to come up with a new short story collection at some time, or perhaps the three-in-one book novella collection; it’s hard to say. And I kind of want to try to write a romance. There’s always so much I want to write, isn’t there?

Heavy heaving sigh. I don’t think I’ll ever match the days when I used to write four or five novels per year, but I do think I am going to be able to get a lot more writing done now in the next few years. Next weekend I am doing a signing at the ALA event here in New Orleans at the Convention Center, and of course the next weekend I am off to Alabama, and then it’s Carnival. Utter madness!

And now I am going to head into the spice mines. Have a lovely Sunday, Constant Reader, and I will probably check in with you again later.

Homeward Bound

So, when Ellen Byron was preparing to interview me for our live stream event from Murder by the Book, she sent me some questions to prepare myself with. They were good questions, actually, and I thought that taking time to answer them when I can think about the responses would be an excellent BLATANT SELF-PROMOTION post.

So, without further ado, here we go!

What inspired your book? Series premise and the specific story?

That’s an interesting story, actually. I had been toying with the idea of writing a cozy for a long time–I’ve always liked them–but never was sure I could do it; there were rules, after all, and I’m terrible about following rules, always have been. Several friends have been encouraging me for years to do it, but I always hesitated. It was (I thought) outside of my comfort zone, and while I would toy with ideas here and there, none ever came to anything. My partner’s office is near a costume shop, and he’d had to go in there one day for some reason or another, and as is his wont, he struck up a conversation with an employee about the costume business, how they made money, how they stayed open all year, etc etc etc. He’s very curious. Anyway, that night I mentioned to him that someone had yet again suggested I write a cozy, and he wasn’t sure what one was, so I gave him a thumbnail overview, and he said, “Oh, you should do a costume shop” and proceeded to tell me about his conversation with the shop employee. I agreed it was an interesting idea, and stowed it away in the back of my head for future reference, and would think about it now and then, come up with characters and a community for the main character to be a part of, and so on. But at the same time I kept thinking New Orleans wasn’t the right place for a cozy series–basically looking for ways to fail instead of reasons to succeed, which is the underlying theme of my life, really–and so it went. An editor I’ve worked with before was interested in the idea of my writing a cozy series, so I wrote up a proposal and sent it off. They liked it, but couldn’t sign it, and recommended I take it somewhere else, so I did. It evolved from a costume shop to an antique shop during the process of me signing a contract with Crooked Lane; they liked everything about my idea except for the shop itself, so I had to change that. I went down to Magazine Street and walked for a block, writing down every kind of shop I saw, and sent the list in–and we all came to an agreement about the series being structured around an antiques business. As for the story, well, I wanted to talk about and explore the gentrification of New Orleans that has been ongoing almost this entire century, and how real estate has just exploded around here. (It still staggers me that our rent was $450 when we first moved here; the lowest rent I’ve seen advertised in our neighborhood is around $1500 for less than thousand square feet. Our original apartment now rents for $2500 per month now, which is insane.) What happens to Valerie–the fear of a new tax assessment pricing her out of her house–actually happened to a friend of mine; and the prices just seem to keep going up all the time. You can’t even buy a condo in my neighborhood for less than $350, 000 now–the asking prices for houses in the neighborhood are completely insane. Every time I see a new listing in the neighborhood for half a million dollars or more I think, we really should have bought when we moved here–but home-ownership is New Orleans isn’t something Paul or I have ever been terribly interested in. Termites, tornados, hurricanes, floods, black mold–no thanks! But man, what a return on our investment had we bought in 1996!

We both write series set in New Orleans. Why do you find it so inspiring? Especially when you’ve lived in so many other places?

I’ve lived all over the country–we’re from Alabama, and I’ve lived in Chicago on the south side, the suburbs, Kansas, Fresno, Houston, Tampa, Minneapolis and then New Orleans. New Orleans is the only place I’ve ever been to where I felt like I belonged, where I fit in; where I didn’t seem like the eccentric one. New Orleans embraces its eccentrics and doesn’t judge them, and I like that. I knew that first time I came here on my birthday in 1994 that if I moved here all my dreams would come true. And they have, which has been kind of lovely. And no writer could ever exhaust the inspiration New Orleans provides. I’ve written fifteen books set here and countless short stories at this point, and haven’t even scratched the surface. I’ve never written about the music scene here, for one glaring example, or restaurants or the food industry or…you see what I mean? There’s not enough time in my life to write everything I want to about New Orleans.

Tell us about your protagonist. Where did the inspiration for her come from?

My sister never had any interest in going to college or having any kind of career other than being a wife and mother. She was a straight A student and had numerous scholarship offers, but had little to no interest. I used to always think she had wasted her potential, but gradually came to the realization that she has the life she always wanted when she was growing up, and has never missed having a career outside of the home–so rather than feeling bad about her lost potential, I should have been happy that her dreams came true. I started thinking about that more, and thought that would make a great starting place–a woman like my sister who wasn’t really very interested in college but went because it was expected of her…only to fall in love, get married, and drop out when she had twins. I really like the idea of a woman who’s not yet thirty, who wasn’t really sure what she wanted from life and then sidetracked to wife-and-mother, but with her kids now off to college and her husband having died…what do you do for the rest of your life when you’re a widow at thirty-eight and your kids have left for college? And the more I thought about her, the more I liked her and wanted to write about her.

Why did you choose the Irish Channel as the neighborhood?

My Scotty series is set in the French Quarter, and the Chanse series was set in the lower Garden District (where I’ve always lived and always default to it for that very reason), so I wanted to do something different this time out. Before I moved here, I had friends who lived in the Channel and I loved their house and I loved their neighborhood. I had already started writing a novella set in their old house, and I thought, why not use that same house for this series? The Channel did used to be considered a bad part of town, too, when we first moved here (so was the lower Garden District, which we didn’t know), and so I thought the gentrification issue would work better there than in my neighborhood. That part of the Channel is one I used to spend a lot of time in. As my character mentions in the book, I used to hang out at the Rue de la Course coffee shop at the corner of Magazine and Harmony–it was where I would meet friends for coffee. I’m still bitter it closed.

Similarities in our series: both widows, both have family mysteries, both live in the Irish Channel, you have jokes about potholes, I have a plot point about them. Let’s talk about NOLA’s potholes.

Oh, the potholes! Ironically, an active one ate one of my car tires a few weeks ago. Usually, if I am going someplace and have to turn around, there’s usually room for me to make a U-turn or I can turned into a driveway and turn around. This particular day the bar on the corner had reopened after being sold, closed, and renovated for a few months. So, there were cars everywhere, including blocking the driveways, and I thought, fine, I’ll just go around the block, which I hadn’t done in years. Because I hadn’t done that i years, I forgot there’s a massive pothole right when you make the turn so you have to jog left to avoid it. I hit the pothole, hard, and when I did, I thought oh that’s not good and as I continued driving I noticed the car was pulling to the left–which was the tire that hit the pothole. Sure enough, it was flat. It had a nail in it, and I happened to hit the pothole perfectly so that the nail dragged, tearing a hole in the tire. So, yes, New Orleans is a city of potholes–all different shapes, sizes, and depths. When the streets flood the water hides the potholes, and if they are really deep…the one on our street (which is reforming after being filled in and paved over for like the fiftieth time) ate a pick-up truck when that end of the street flooded a few years ago, so our street was blocked until the water went down and a tow truck could get in.

You have a Nolier than thou joke – I have OhNo!LA, an app that’s a runner in the book.

I wish I could claim credit for that joke, but I stole it from Bill Loefhelm, another New Orleans crime writer when we were on a panel together talking about writing about New Orleans and the need to get things right. He responded to a question about accuracy by saying something like “Yes, you really don’t want to set off the Nolier-Than-Thou people” and it still makes me laugh whenever I think about it because it’s so true! In all honesty, I am one of those people–nothing is more infuriating to me than reading something set in New Orleans that doesn’t get it right–but I’ve loosened up some as I’ve gotten older. I was even wondering if that was still a thing while I was writing this book…but since it’s come out I’ve seen any number of locals posting reviews and comments about “how (he) got New Orleans right” so it is still a thing. (And I’m glad and grateful people think I get ir right.)

How would you say your past experiences and jobs in life inform your writing?

I always say that life is material, as is every experience you’ve had. I’ve had so many jobs over the years and have been fired so many times I can’t keep track of them all anymore. But I also had a huge variety of jobs–fast food to retail to food service to banking to insurance to an airline to being a personal trainer to managing a health club to being a magazine editor to my present job working in an STI clinic as a sexual health counselor. Whenever I am creating a character and need a job for them, I inevitably fall back on one of my experiences. The main character in The Orion Mask worked at an airport–I’ve written a lot of characters who work for airlines–and so I try to get away from my own experiences once I catch myself doing it again. I have always had jobs that required interaction with other humans, so I’ve gotten to observe a lot of human behavior. I’ve written about high school students in Kansas (where I went to high school). I’ve written about fraternities because I was in one (hard as it is to believe now). I played football in high school, I’ve written about football players in high school. The only places I’ve lived that I’ve not written about are Chicago, Houston, and Tampa (I have written about Florida, but just the panhandle, where I spent of time as a kid).

I read a blog post where you talked about your relationship with the city. How has it morphed over the years and where does it stand now? It sounded like doing promotion and writing about the city reignited your love for it. What’s your writing process? You write in different genres. Is the process different?

As sad as it is to admit, it’s very easy when you live here to start taking New Orleans for granted. As I said before, I usually am so focused on what I am doing–work, writing, errands, chores, etc.–that I don’t pay much attention to my surroundings as I should (I think we are all guilty of this to some degree). About a year before the pandemic, my day job moved. I had worked in our office on Frenchmen Street for well over ten years–right across the street from Mona’s, in that block between Decatur and Chartres, so I was a block outside the Quarter five days a week, and we also used to do a lot of testing in the French Quarter gay bars and passing out condoms during Carnival, Southern Decadence, and Halloween. So I used to spend a lot of time in and around the Quarter. It was lovely–I could go to the Walgreens or the Rouse’s on Royal and there was a bank branch on Chartres Street, too, by the Supreme Court building. Anytime I didn’t have anything in the house to pack for lunch I could just walk into the Quarter and get something not only amazing but inexpensive. I used to walk past where Scotty lives all the time. After we moved into our new building in the 7th Ward, I don’t go into the Quarter much anymore. So I was starting to feel a bit disconnected from New Orleans already before the pandemic shut everything down. But I realized when I started doing promo for this book that I am not disconnected from New Orleans. I’ve just lived here so long that I don’t take as much note of the unusual or the weird as I used to–it’s become normalized to me. I’ve acclimated. It’s still just as weird and wild and crazy here as it always has been, it just doesn’t strike me as weird and wild and crazy the way it used to. I need to take more walks and spend more time exploring the city and checking things out. I don’t know if all the hidden places I used to take friends to eat in the Quarter are still there, either. Maybe after Mardi Gras…

Callin’ Baton Rouge

I have decided, at long last, to throw away my ratty old LSU sweatshirt.

This sweatshirt, for the record, predates Paul, that’s how old it is. It’s either thirty or twenty-nine; I cannot really remember one way or the other. It was, however, my very first LSU sweatshirt–the first of many–and I bought it at the bookstore on the LSU campus. I don’t remember which drive from Houston to Tampa it was when I stopped on campus and bought it–it was either a time when I was driving my new car from Houston back to Tampa, or when I was riding with a friend who was driving from Phoenix to Tampa–I flew into Houston, he met me at the airport and we drove on to Tampa from there, but for a very long time it was my only LSU sweatshirt, and I’ve always had a deep fondness for it. It’s been worn and washed so many times that it’s incredibly thin and threadbare; the neckline is fraying and so are the sleeves at the wrist. It’s stained and ratty and messy, so much so that I won’t even wear it to run errands. I only wear it around the house and usually only when all the other sweatshirts are dirty (I live in sweats when I am at home), and the other day as I was putting it on I realized not only how old it was but how bad of shape it was in. Why are you holding on to this sweatshirt? I asked myself, and then Saturday morning as I was folding it out of the dryer I thought throw it away, why are you keeping this? Sentiment? You pride yourself on your lack of that emotion, so I decided to take a photo of it, write a farewell blog entry to it, and put it in the trash–which I should have done years ago, really.

I don’t even remember why I decided to stop on campus and buy it, to be honest. I have no memory of that at all. Even now, when we are on campus for games and go by the store, it doesn’t look familiar at all from back then. Maybe they’ve built or redesigned the campus store, I don’t know; it’s certainly possible. But I don’t remember it being right by the stadium, either; it’s possible there are two stores on campus. I couldn’t say for sure.

Despite growing up as an Auburn and Alabama fan (in that order; the rule was you always rooted for Alabama unless they were playing Auburn), I’ve always kind of been partial to LSU, even though I had no connection to either the school or the state until much later in life. I’ve tried to remember why I always liked LSU, even as a kid–I think it was two things: purple has always been a favorite color of mine, especially when paired with gold, and the live tiger on campus (which I am now on the fence about–I see the arguments both for and against keeping a live tiger on campus as a mascot, but I love that tiger). My cousin actually was on the Auburn team that lost the Earthquake Game back in 1988–my family is still bitter about that 7-6 last minute loss–and when we moved to Louisiana, I got Paul into college football and he became an LSU fan because we lived here. I still rooted for Auburn and Alabama and LSU, in that order. I was still rooting for Auburn and Alabama when they played LSU, though; even in 2003 when LSU won its first national championship since 1958. It was 2005 when everything shifted for me on the college football landscape; that horrible 2005 season after Katrina, when LSU’s football team was about the only positive thing Louisiana had going for it that season, that was when I went full-on bleed purple-and-gold LSU fan, and have never looked back since. Paul of course had already gone full tilt LSU fan, and his enthusiasm was catching. I used to only care about college football; now I pay attention to almost every sport, from basketball to gymnastics to baseball to track so I can root for the Tigers.

Even before LSU moved to the front of the list, I was writing about LSU. Chanse played scholarship football for LSU, and would have possibly played pro had he not suffered a career-ending knee injury in the Sugar Bowl his last season of eligibility. Chanse was a tight end; and I had always intended for Chanse to go back to LSU and solve a murder on the campus, at his fraternity house. That story, “Once a Tiger,” is about four thousand words in; I’ve debated turning it into both a novel or a novella rather than a short story. Scotty is an LSU fan–I wrote about Mike the Tiger in Baton Rouge Bingo–and of course, in A Streetcar Named Murder Valerie’s twin sons are in their first semester up there.

Looks pretty bad, doesn’t it? It served me well for nearly three four decades!

Paul and I went to our first LSU game in Tiger Stadium in November of 2010. It was the Mississippi game, the Magnolia Bowl; there’s not much love lost between LSU and Mississippi–their fans still can’t get over Billy Cannon’s Run back in 1959. LSU has ruined many a season for the Rebels, and vice versa, but I do think they hate us more than we hate them. The game was amazing, and we had a great time. We went to several games in 2011, and it wasn’t until the COVID year of 2020 that we went the entire season without going to a game; the only game we went to in 2021 was the first time the Tigers ever lost when we were at the game (Auburn, ironically; it was also Auburn’s first win in Baton Rouge this century). We didn’t go to any games this year, either; not sure if we will be going to any more in the future, either; but one never knows, and I would like to go to at least one more Saturday night game in Death Valley. We’ve been to some great games over the years, and I am very happy to say that we got to see that great 2019 team play twice–and we were at the Florida game, which was amazing and exciting and I couldn’t talk for at least three days afterwards.

And of course, this season was all over the place, but the team did something never done before in LSU football history: won at both Florida and Auburn…so obviously, the team has never won in Gainesville and Auburn and beat Alabama in Baton Rouge. Not even Joe Burrow could do that; in his first year as a Tiger he was 1-2 in those three games. So, if nothing else, Jayden Daniels has won a place in LSU history for that, and Brian Kelly did something in his first year in Baton Rouge that no LSU coach had ever done before–including Nick Saban (even the year Saban led LSU to a national title, that team lost to Florida in Tiger Stadium).

And so it’s goodbye to my old sweatshirt at long last. I don’t know why I didn’t throw it away sooner–it’s been ratty and stained and threadbare for years–unless it was an unconscious kind of sentimentality. I haven’t preserved much of my pre-Paul life–I’ve always viewed those years as a prologue to the rest of my life–but this was one of the few things left from that time.

But its time has passed, so farewell to you, old LSU sweatshirt. You served me well…and now I get to buy a new one to replace it. YES!

And here’s my Christmas gift from Paul this year:

Let It Snow! Let It Snow! Let It Snow!

Today’s title is meant to be ironic, of course; I despise snow. It’s pretty to look at, sure, but everything else? Snow can fuck all the way off. I hate almost everything about it. Sure, while the novelty is entertaining at first, I tire of it very quickly. I turned on the heat this morning when I got up–I slept well again last night, which was lovely–because it’s in the fifties this morning. I saw a long-range forecast for the weather on Christmas weekend–next weekend, actually–and it may get down into the twenties next weekend here. AIEEEE!!! That cold means it could actually snow here for Christmas, which is interesting.

I really need to write a book for Scotty where it snows here. The way New Orleans reacts to snow is kind of entertaining and a little annoying; everyone is terrified of it, and given how badly everyone drive here when it rains–you get the picture. The entire city basically shuts down because people are afraid to drive in snow. I know it’s unkind to not be more sensitive on that score–the majority of people here rarely, if ever, have driven in snow, while I grew up with it and learned how to drive in it because I didn’t have a choice; Kansas didn’t shut down when it snowed and the roads were covered in ice, and of course I lived in Minneapolis for a winter. If Minnesota shut down because of snow, everyone would be housebound for five to six months a year.

It’s been a long and awful week; let’s face it, December has sucked almost from day one. Seriously. I mean, I thought November was bad, but Christ. Last night I was exhausted–we watched the two new episodes of Three Pines, but I kept dozing off–not because of the show, but because I was tired. We found a perfect refrigerator–everything we want, at a price we can afford, but of course it’s two inches too tall to fit under our fucking cabinets, so the search goes on. But it was also a brand I didn’t recognize, so maybe we can find one that will fit from that brand somewhere else? One can hope. I really want one with the freezer on the bottom, to be honest, because I hate having to bend down all the time and the older I get the more difficult that gets. I imagine that’s going to also continue to be the case going forward; it’s not going to get easier to bend down the older I get. Here’s hoping, you know? Paul thinks we might be able to have that particular section of the cabinets taken down–it’s not like we can use them for anything because I need a ladder to be able to reach them–but I don’t know if that’s possible, or what kind of mess that would leave behind. Heavy sigh. But we’re on the road to getting it replaced, which is a start. Yay! It’s never really been the same since that hurricane evacuation in 2008, whichever one that was during the Republican National Convention. So, about fourteen years? I mean it still functions, but the door doesn’t always seal closed when I shut it–you have to make sure–and now we’re getting condensation all over the roof of the refrigerator compartment; it’s been doing that since Ike last year once the power was restored. I’ve tried everything to make it stop, but nothing ever seems to work, which totally sucks.

But it’s Saturday, and while it is kind of grayish outside, I am looking forward to a highly productive and effective weekend of work. I’m still concerned about the book, of course–when am I not worried about a book I’ve written or am writing–but it seems to be shaping up nicely. Naturally, this is always a concern for me particularly with a book in progress; you never know how it’s going to turn out or if it’s going to turn out the way you’d hoped or planned. I think part of the issue I am having this time around is that i am dealing with a subject that could be sensitive if handled badly–meaning that I’m afraid of it in some ways and that could explain why this book is turning out to be so hard for me to write. But I don’t ever want to write anything that’s easy; I want to be challenged by my work and if my work challenges me, then it is pushing me as writer to delve deeply into subjects that make me uncomfortable–and this book is definitely making me uncomfortable. So, that’s a very good thing.

I also feel rested this morning, which is kind of nice. The length of my to-do list isn’t as daunting or defeating as it usually is when I look at it in the morning, so here’s hoping that I can tear my way through that to-do list or at least as much of it as possible today and tomorrow.

And on that note, my messy kitchen is calling me, so I am heading off to the spice mines. Hope you have a lovely weekend wherever you are, Constant Reader.

Carol

I have to go to the West Bank this morning to buy two new tires for the car. An active pothole destroyed my driver’s side front tire the other day, and so I need to get at least one new tire, probably two so their wear pattern will match. The tires are supposed to be good for 50k miles; I don’t even have 30k on my car yet, which makes this even more frustrating. Perhaps this is my punishment for writing about potholes the other day on the Wickeds blog, with “The Orange Cone”? I may have angered the pothole gods, and they must be appeased to the tune of several hundred dollars.

Ah, well, there’s nothing to do but go whip out a credit card and pay for new tires. At least I can take Wanda Morris’ Anywhere You Run with me to read while I wait for the tires to be mounted and put on the car.

I was very tired yesterday when I got home from work. I didn’t sleep well Monday night (did better last night, frankly) and so was already tired going into the day. I was monitoring my blog post at Mystery Lovers’ Kitchen so I could reply to everyone’s comments, and they were keeping me occupied between clients and the end of my shift. When I got home, I had a few hours to make the kitchen presentable before going live with Ellen Byron and Murder by the Book, which was a lot of fun. Paul came home as we were wrapping it up, so we could watch another episode of Victoria’s Secret: Angels and Demons, which moved on to the Epstein/Ghislaine Maxwell connection to Victoria’s Secret, and it seems as though human trafficking and models being pimped out by their agencies might very well have been happening in the industry before Epstein, from the looks of things. B

But the event went really well–it was nice seeing John from the store again, and he said very nice things about my book beforehand, including “After reading it and liking it a lot, I have to ask, why did it take so long for you to write a cozy?” which I thought was the highest compliment I could ever receive. There have been times that I have felt like a carpetbagger in the subgenre; poaching in territory not my own. But one thing I will say about the cozy subgenre–the authors and readers are incredibly kind, supportive and welcoming to new authors entering their territory. It’s been lovely seeing all the support from other cozy writers and readers on social media in the weeks leading up to the book’s release, and it’s also something I’m really not used to, to be honest. I don’t want to make it sound like I haven’t had support from colleagues and readers before–because that wouldn’t be the truth–but this entire experience, from the announcement of the contract to the cover reveal to the release, has been so incredibly lovely and affirming that like John, I wonder why it took me so long to join the ranks of the cozy writers? Ellen and I did agree on camera that my Scotty series was a more of an edgy cozy series that breaks some of the rules (profanity, sex, violence and blood on the page) than anything else; Scotty may be a licensed private eye but no one ever hires him–he just stumbles into bodies and mysteries all the time through no effort of his own.

Christ, I am so behind on my Scotty book. Heavy heaving sigh.

(Even in the midst of self-promotion, I can always feel guilty about the progress of whatever it is I am working on at the moment.)

After I get the tires put on the car and paid for, then it’s off to the office to finish my work day. This week has been a weird one; sick on Monday, flat tire, promotional events, book launch, and now a morning spent at the car dealership. Not exactly how I saw the week going Sunday morning while I was drinking coffee and planning ahead–which is another great example of ‘man plans, the gods laugh”–and now today is even Pay-the-Bills Day and I didn’t really notice because. well, I need to get to the dealership this morning and buy new tires…all the while hoping the spare makes it to the West Bank intact. (It’s supposedly good for fifty miles and I haven’t gotten anywhere close to that kind of mileage since changing the tire.)

But life always has a habit of interfering with your best laid plans, doesn’t it?

And on that note, I am hopping into the shower and heading over to the West Bank. Wish me well, Constant Reader, and that it’s quick and easy to get in and out. Fingers crossed, at any rate.