Tag: Scotty

Behind the Mask

Saturday here in the Lost Apartment and Paul is coming home tonight. Huzzah! Also a big day in college football down here in the South, with Georgia-Tennessee this afternoon and LSU-Alabama tonight (and the good news for Florida and Texas A&M fans is one of them has to win the game, so one team’s losing slide will temporarily stop). I have things to do this morning, lots of things to do and many miles to walk before I sleep. Last night I was very tired when I finished my day’s work; and so repaired to my easy chair with Scooter in my lap and watched Low Country, a documentary series about the Murtaugh family crimes in South Carolina. Ironically, I started watching it because I vaguely remembered hearing about the story–wife and son murdered, father shot and wounded, etc.–but I did not know the back story to all of it, which this series provides a small window into; it really only covers the recent crimes, not the criminality of the family going back almost a hundred years–but as I watched, I started seeing similarities to the book I am writing now (powerful corrupt wealthy family that basically rules a rural area as their own duchy), and ideas and things to make my own book better started riffing through my mind. One thing that urban people never get about rural areas is how much of that sort of thing goes on, especially in the South. I am really going to have to go back and dig deeper with what I’ve already done, but I am confident I can get that all worked out this weekend and then get to work on the second half of the book next week.

I slept really well again last night. I started falling asleep in my chair once I finished watching Low Country–again, worth the watch, and yes, very shocking that rural counties in the twenty-first century are still so feudal, so undemocratic, so twisted that any one person or family can be so above the law that they essentially control the justice system in the region, to the point that they get away with murder–and so went to bed early. Scooter has started sleeping with me at night, purring and cuddling, and that also helps me sleep (Paul and I have agreed that Scooter’s super power is the ability to put anyone to sleep by cuddling and purring) and I woke up feeling very settled and relaxed and rested this morning, which is terrific since I have so much to get done today (as always). But I am going to do some cleaning this morning while I do some computer clean-up and so forth (ugh, my files are such a scattered and disgusting mess, it’s not even funny; I would be better about this, of course, if Macs didn’t have that search function) and don’t plan to go anywhere today. I’ve ordered groceries to pick up for tomorrow–I also have to air up one of my tires–and other than that, I don’t plan to leave the house tomorrow either. I need to get caught up and reorganized and all of that–the usual stuff I complain about on here every day. The week went by relatively quickly, too. I read some more of the new Wanda Morris novel, which I took to bed with me but I didn’t stay awake long enough to read more than a few pages–which were fantastic. I can’t begin to talk about how delighted and exciting it is to see new perspectives, new voices, and new stories from marginalized authors. I’m just sorry it took so long to get us to this point, but this was exactly what our genre needed.

My book’s official release date is rapidly approaching, and I am trying not to get over-anxious and/or nervous about it. I need to start pushing the book more, but I am not really certain how or what to do, to be honest. I’m excited about it, of course. The reviews have thus far been pretty favorable–other than that snarky Kirkus one, but even it didn’t bother me at all, and besides, they’re known for being snarky in their reviews and always have been; I guess that’s growth of a sort. Bad reviews don’t get under my skin the way they used to when I first started doing this, you know. I tend to stay away from Goodreads and Amazon reviews–therein lies the path to madness–but my skin has thickened a lot over the years and I know what my reactions will be and why put myself into a position of any kind that might emotionally unbalance me? God knows I don’t need any help in that direction, for sure.

I also watched another documentary about gay porn, Seed Money: The Chuck Holmes Story which was very interesting. Holmes was Falcon Studios, one of the bigger and more successful brands in gay porn for a very long time, and it did give me some ideas for future projects. I will probably, most likely, keep writing Scotty books until I die (for those of you who were wondering; the next one will probably be another Carnival mystery, French Quarter Flambeaux), but I may not write anymore young adult novels. It’s not that I don’t want to or have a lot of ideas for them, but my time is limited and I want to explore other writing options and genres within crime fiction. I really am feeling the desire to work on my queer historical noirs–beginning with Chlorine–and then moving on to cover other parts of queer history from the second half of the twentieth century. Obscenity would be about gay porn; Indecency would be built around Joey Stefano’s arrest in Tampa for public indecency…and of course there would be more but that’s the original trilogy I’d want to write. They wouldn’t be connected stories–the only commonality would be the fight against oppression and repression–but I think they would be a lot of fun. I have titles for others–Beefcake, Peplum, Physique–but don’t have stories to go with those yet (although I do introduce a Bob Mizer-like character in Chlorine who could drive one of them; Peplum would be, in some ways, a sequel to Chlorine–but it wouldn’t have to be, since I’ve not really decided on the end of that book yet, but one of the possibilities does leave the path open to a sequel.

And on that note, I am going to get to work on the chores and get cleaned up and get this party started. Have a lovely Saturday, and GEAUX TIGERS!

Stand on the Rock

Thursday morning and I slept really well last night. About time, right? But it’s amazing what a good night’s sleep makes, especially coming after two consecutive nights of insomnia. It’s lovely not to feel tired, you know? I was so tired when I got home from work yesterday that my eyes were almost crossing. I was too tired to think, too tired to write, too tired to do much of anything, so I just collapsed into my easy chair–Scooter actually slept in my lap all evening, and when I got up, he’d curl up in the chair again waiting for me to come back, which was very sweet–and then I watched the documentary God Forbid, which focuses on the Jerry Falwell Jr. pool boy scandal that ended Falwell’s career, from the pool boy’s point of view, which made it a lot more interesting.

It also explored how Falwell’s father led the evangelicals into politics and set us on the downward path that put our entire democracy into the peril it still faces today. The original Falwell was a monster–racist, homophobic, misogynist–and perverted Christianity for money and power. He isn’t the first to do this–look up “Father Coughlin” sometime–and maybe not event the worst (anything is possible), but the damage done to the fabric of the culture and society, predicated on the evangelical desire to make this a Christofascist nation (definitely not what the Founders wanted), by this man and his son may even prove irreparable in the long run. Who knows? Falwell Jr. was important to the election of Trump and the evangelical embrace of this thrice-married ungodly and unChristian wannabe dictator, too. And it got the evangelicals what they’ve wanted since Falwell Senior realized that open racism wasn’t a winning ticket–but abortion could be: the overturn of Roe v. Wade. Would Falwell have backed Trump if Michael Cohen hadn’t known about the sick sexual games the Falwells were playing with a young, naïve young man named Giancarlo Granda? It would make an epic crime novel, truly–I loved John D. Macdonald’s examination of a Midwestern megachurch, One More Sunday, which I really enjoyed.

I have had this idea for a crime novel built around a cult-like church for quite some time. When I was living in Kansas, there was a college in Emporia that was owned and operated by just such a cult-like church. The College of Emporia, a Presbyterian school, had gone bankrupt and closed in 1973. A few years later it was purchased by The Way International and transformed into The Way College of Emporia. The Way College was strange. Their campus was closed to outsiders and patrolled at night by armed guards. There was all kinds of gossip around the county about what went on there and the kinds of things they believed and did; the students always wore name-tags and travelled in pairs–and would often try to corner other young people and proselytize. When I was working at McDonalds, for example, I observed them do this to a girl who was cleaning tables in the lobby. They essentially waited until she was in a part of the place that had only one way out, and once she was back there cleaning tables, they blocked the way out to talk to her. They always had this weird look on their faces, too–their eyes always seemed either glazed or vacant or both, and they always had a zombie-like smile that didn’t reach their eyes. One of the many iterations of the Kansas book took place over two time-lines, one in the 1970’s and the other the present day; where the quarterback’s murder in a sex scandal in the 1970’s gave rise to a megachurch in the town. I have done some research in the Way International (they sold the Way College and its campus to Emporia State University sometime after we left Kansas) and even have a book written by someone who belonged and got out.,,so I would never say never.

Oh, and thank you, Brazil, for ousting your Fascist. Well done!

Unfortunately, my exhaustion last night means that I have fallen another day behind on the book, which isn’t good. But it was really out of my hands, to be honest. I was so tired I don’t even really remember driving home from work last night–which is NOT a good thing at all. But I am hoping that feeling rested and not being exhausted will make a difference tonight. I am halfway done–it’s planned to be twenty chapters, and I finished Chapter Ten on Tuesday–so tonight I am going to go back and reread and edit the first half of the book. It’ll take some serious work–the kind where I have to close the Internet browsers to avoid distraction–because some of the earlier chapters need to be moved around and rearranged; the order in which the story unfolds needs to be switched up a bit–and I need to outline the first half as well as make a character list and due a timeline. I also realized that my usual Scotty thing to do–parody the opening of a famous novel–doesn’t have to be a parody of a famous novel opening–and I’ve always wanted to write something that opened the way Dark Shadows did (“My name is Victoria Winters”), so why not do that? “My name is Scotty Bradley” or something along those lines. I wonder if Victoria’s opening monologue from episode one is on-line anywhere? Better add that to the list.

And on that note, Constant Reader, I am going to head into the spice mines. Have a great Thursday, and I will talk to you again tomorrow.

Isn’t It Midnight

Well, I jinxed myself by saying yesterday–either here or to someone at the office–that I hadn’t had insomnia for a long time. So, of course last night it returned with a vengeance. I stayed in bed, of course, drifting in and out of mild, light sleep most of the night, which wasn’t very much fun. I feel rested this morning, but I also felt rested yesterday and was really tired by the time the afternoon rolled around. I did get a lot of work done, too, which was super-great. I wrote a chapter of the book (a terrible one, but a chapter was written nonetheless) so progress was made–and the story is beginning to coalesce inside my head right now, which is also a very good thing. I am thinking I can get this draft finished by the end of the month and then spend November cleaning it the fuck up.

We continued watching A Friend of the Family last night, and yikes, what a situation this family found itself in. It’s very easy to judge them with the hindsight of the twenty-first century behind our reasoning, but the 1970’s were a vastly different time. In a small city like Pocatello and in a small community like the Mormon Church of the area–you’d never think you’d meet a sociopath in that environment, nor would you think about perverts or pedophilia or sociopathy in someone you’d met that way. And you never want to believe that your child was molested; so naturally in that time you would seize on any excuse to say that wasn’t the case. We only have one episode left, so I am curious to see how it all turns out. I don’t think they ever got any justice (which seems to be a rare thing indeed), and the fact that the man claimed he had the parents’ permission to take the girl to Mexico–where he married her, bigamously–even though the parents said it was a lie and the police basically took his side, is mind-boggling to me. (An adult can no longer take a minor out of the country without documentation, usually notarized, from the parents. A single parent taking a minor out of the country has to have documentation stating that the other parent is aware and grants permission; this was drilled into us at the airline…)

I also cannot imagine the guilt the parents lived with for the rest of their lives, either. Yet another reason I am glad to not be a parent, seriously. Never had any desire, and don’t miss it in the least.

It rained overnight, apparently, which could explain the insomnia; barometric pressure changes, particularly dramatic ones, can affect my sinuses and thus my sleep. My sinuses feel fine, but I also took a Claritin yesterday so that could be the answer. It’s feeling very muggy this morning, which is okay as our office is always super-cold in one area while temperate in another. I may wear a sweatshirt under my work T-shirt. (Is this stuff as fascinating to you as it is to me?)

Probably, since I’m boring myself I can’t imagine that I am fascinating or interesting you, Constant Reader.

I have errands to run on my way home. I am getting antsy, because I am expecting the finished box o’books for A Streetcar Named Murder to arrive at any time (probably will not come until November because I want them to come now, right?) and I am also expecting to get a contributor copy for an anthology I sold a story to–still waiting to get paid as well–so I actually have a vested interest in going to get the mail. Again, probably none of this will come until next month, but I am getting antsy and I am always impatient; something that can inevitably always be counted on is my impatience. I haven’t had a hardcover release in eighteen years or so, so am really looking forward to seeing how beautiful the finished book looks. I love the cover, and the entire thing has been an absolute pleasure every step of the way once the book was finished, you know? I hope you’ve preordered. I am planning on turning this blog into a heavy promotion site soon for the book as well; I’m not really sure what I am doing so bear with me. I’m not exactly sure how to go about doing promotional entries here, either, but hey–it’s something new and different and why shouldn’t I talk about my book here, trying to get people interested enough to read it?

I also came to a hilarious realization yesterday on the current book as I was writing it, and thinking to myself, can you really bring this character back from Scotty’s past when you’ve already mentioned him earlier in the plot? Isn’t that kind of, I don’t know, contrived? And then I started laughing because I had completely forgotten what I was doing with this Scotty book–that no one will probably notice, as no one seems to ever notice what I am doing with my books, but that’s okay; I know and that’s all that matters, right? Anyway, I remembered what the entire point of writing the book was yesterday and now that I’ve actually remembered what I was doing–an homage to Nancy Drew/The Hardy Boys style of crime novels–of course this all will make sense. Besides, the point of the Scotty series is their utter preposterousness; it’s not reality and it doesn’t claim to be; they never have. I also kind of worried because of some similarities to Streetcar–namely, an old family feud no one remembers the root cause behind–but then I laughed at myself yet again. I’ve written over forty books and over fifty short stories at this point in my life; inevitably I am going to repeat plot points and themes.

And on that note, I am heading into the spice mines. Have a lovely day, Constant Reader.

Everywhere

Saturday morning in the Lost Apartment and all is well this morning. I slept in a bit (I also went to bed later than I usually do, so I slept about the same amount, really) and feel rested and relaxed this morning, which is always a nice, pleasant thing to feel. I didn’t get much work done on the book yesterday (355 words, all of them bad except maybe “Scotty” and “Frank” and “Colin”) but that’s okay; I feel a lot less stressed and a lot less pressured this morning about everything that needs to be done now. The stuff all needs to get done, of course; that hasn’t changed, but I am not feeling as much stress about it as I was feeling yesterday.

I read more of ‘salem’s Lot last night while I was waiting for my friend Ellen Byron (buy her books! Bayou Book Thief is amazing!) to text me to meet her for a drink. I picked her up at the Sazerac House (Canal and Magazine) and it had been quite a while since I drove down that way in the evening, and yikes. SO much traffic, so many people everywhere. I’m still not used to pedestrians in the CBD at night, even though the area hasn’t been a ghost town at night in years, but then we swung around and came up to have drinks at St. Vincent’s, which has been renovated and redone and remade and turned into a boutique luxury hotel right here in the heart of my neighborhood. I’ve posted some pictures of the place when I was doing my walks through the neighborhood last year; it’s even more beautiful inside than I imagined. These weekend is Tulane Homecoming, so there are a shit ton of people in town (that’s actually what brought Ellen to New Orleans, in fact; she is an alum) for that, and of course the people from Mississippi here for today’s LSU game in Baton Rouge (Geaux Tigers!). It was lovely to sit and have a drink and talk about writing and books and this crazy business we are in; she’s an absolute delight (buy her books!) and I look forward to the next time I get to see her.

But this morning I realized how utterly I am failing at reading. October is winding down; Halloween is a week from Monday, and I still haven’t finished my reread of ‘salem’s Lot, let alone done my annual Halloween reread of The Haunting of Hill House or getting caught up on the horror novels in my TBR pile. I’ll spend some more time with Mr. King this morning before I run my errands–I have to go get the mail and I have to stop at the grocery store because I want to make white bean chicken chili tomorrow, and have nothing I need for that–and I am debating whether I want to grill burgers today or not. The LSU game is on today at 2:30, and of course Skate America is airing this weekend (yay for figure skating!) so I’ll have to write around those times.

The reread of ‘salem’s Lot is a lot of fun, actually; I am really enjoying this revisit of the book and seeing why I enjoyed it so much the first time around. King wasn’t STEPHEN KING yet when he wrote and published it, so I am sure it didn’t get the kindest reception from critics of the time; particularly when you take into consideration what they considered to be great writing back then. I don’t remember when it was that the Literati changed their mind on Stephen King, but I do remember how he wasn’t taken seriously as a writer by them for a very long time (he writes horror! He’s too prolific to be a real writer!), and some of his best work was already behind him by the time he got the anointing he deserved for a very long time. I mean, he had quite a run, and quite a varied one at that, before he finally published a book I didn’t like (The Tommyknockers, for the record) and it seemed an aberration as he seemed to climb back on the horse and right the saddle in the next one after that. I love how many points of view he uses in ‘salem’s Lot, giving us little glimpses of fully realized characters and their lives to show us human beings so that when they actually wind up becoming vampires, you do feel a sense of loss. Many of these minor characters are objects of sympathy, while others you just kind of shrug when the vampires come for them and think, well, you were a shitty person anyway, oh well, this is justice of a sort. The scene where Mike Ryerson has to finish burying the coffin of Danny Glick is one of the most terrifying scenes I’ve ever read, and it still holds up today. I like how King gets into the point of view character’s head and gives them a voice–which is still King’s, but different from the other voices he uses–and that sort of structured stream of consciousness is something I really like and enjoy reading; I sometimes use that style in my own writing.

(I started to write something self-deprecating, but am proud of myself for catching it and not doing it. Progress.)

And on that note, I am going to head into the manuscript and do some cleaning before the errands are run. Have a lovely day, Constant Reader, and I will check in with you again later or tomorrow.

Royal Street Reveillon

Ah, reality television.

I am, and can be, remarkably naïve when it comes to some things. I literally will believe almost everything I am told because my default is never to assume someone is lying (unless they’ve proven themselves to be a liar before), so I actually believed, all those years I was watching The Real World, that the show was “unscripted” and the cast had cameras and microphones on them 24/7.

Then The Real World came to New Orleans–to my neighborhood, in fact–and the “gay one” got a job bar-backing at Oz (one of my favorite gay bars; and autocorrect tried to turn that into “barebacking”, which is an entirely different thing), and it wasn’t long before I realized that The Real World wasn’t, actually, “real.” I saw them any number of times walking from one destination to another to film, the camera crews not filming and just walking behind the cast; I actually watched them set up a scene in Oz and go through several takes, and so yeah, the luster and magic was gone for me. I think I may have watched another season or two after New Orleans, but reality television had also changed dramatically from when the first season of that show aired (and yes, I am aware that PBS’ An American Family was the first real reality-type show) and by the time I stopped watching that it wasn’t about kids learning to get along and learning from each other’s differences as it was about getting wasted, hooking up, and fighting.

You know, the formula Bravo quickly adapted to in Season Two of The Real Housewives of Orange County.

Viewers want conflict.

I never watched the Real Housewives shows, but usually on Sundays when it wasn’t football season Paul would come downstairs and fall asleep on the couch while I would either read or edit in my easy chair. I’d turn on the television for background noise, and it was just easiest to always park the channel on Bravo because they’d marathon something–originally Law & Order, then The West Wing or Inside the Actor’s Studio, which were fun for an occasional distraction but not enough of one to take my interest away from what I was doing. But Bravo changed, and those marathons eventually became one of the Real Housewives shows. I winced a bit, but again, background noise I didn’t need to pay attention to–it all seemed so exploitative and, well, awful–that I couldn’t see myself ever watching regularly. So I began to slowly recognize who they were–all the gossip site pop-ups and so forth on social media also covered them extensively–and even know something about them. I didn’t want to ever become a regular viewer, didn’t think I ever would.

And yet…

I originally tuned into The Real Housewives of Beverly Hills to see Kim Richards, whom I remembered as a child star when I was a kid–from Nanny and the Professor to Escape to Witch Mountain to Tuff Turf–and was interested to see how she turned out, what happened to her…and just like a soap opera back in the day, I was soon tuning in every week. Some other friends turned out to be big fans of both Orange County and New York, so I started watching New York so we could talk about it (my antipathy to Orange County would be a subject for another essay at some other point), and there was no turning back after that.

I still primarily only watch New York and Beverly Hills with any regularity (although Atlanta is always a favorite), and there have been times when I’ve thrown up my hands in disgust with what was actually going on with the season and stopped watching (I stopped watching Beverly Hills during the “let’s out Denise Richards as bi!” bullshit, for example, and never did finish the season); but I am still absolutely fascinated by the concept behind these shows. Is any of it for real? How much is set up and scripted? It becomes very easy to get sucked into the shows–they are highly addictive; they remind me a lot of soaps as they are very high on petty drama and melodrama, feuds and fights and arguments–and how much of what we see is actually not audience manipulation on the part of production, the network, and the editors. (Women often claim to have “gotten a bad edit”–which always makes me think about The Real World–that show really started everything) I find myself getting emotionally sucked into the petty dramas too–which often spill out into the social media world and the endless blogs that dedicate themselves to reporting on these shows–and there are times when I think, well done, production! I would have never guessed you could ever show me a side of this horrible woman that would make me sympathetic to her.

Because while the women may manipulate and scheme and plan and script things, the primary people being manipulated by production are the audience and the line between reality and “reality” often gets so blurred that it’s hard to tell what is real and what isn’t.

Take, for example, this current rollercoaster of a season of The Real Housewives of Beverly Hills. Before the season started airing there was gossip flying around the Internet about their Aspen trip and a meltdown by a supporting cast member in her second year officially on the show–Kathy Hilton, older sister of OG cast member Kyle Richards–that supposedly went “really dark”…only for the season to start airing and the behavior of other members of the cast (Lisa Rinna, Diana Jenkins, Erica Girardi) being far worse than any of the rumors floated about Kathy’s “meltdown.”

Again, a subject for another time, perhaps once the reunion episodes have aired.

Anyway, I had always thought that a Real Housewives type show, set and filmed in New Orleans, would make the excellent backdrop for a crime story, particularly because of those blurred lines between reality and “reality”…so I used it for one of those e-novellas back in the day. After they were taken off the market, I kept thinking about how I wasted the background of a reality show on a story no one can access anymore and so that original story eventually morphed into Scotty VIII, Royal Street Reveillon.

I fished the last olive out of my almost empty glass and popped it into my mouth. I glanced at my watch as I chewed it, and moaned after swallowing. “There’s nothing like a good martini,” I said, glancing around the bar and getting our server’s attention.

“Do we have time for another?” My nephew Taylor finished the rest of his sazerac and looked at me hopefully.

“I take it you liked it.” I replied, not even trying to hide my smile. “But no time for another unless we want to be late.”

This was Taylor’s first time at the Sazerac Bar. He’d turned twenty-one just a few weeks before Thanksgiving, and since we were going to a party at the Joy Theater, I thought I’d treat him to a sazerac in the bar where they were invented. I personally don’t care for the drink—give me gin or vodka any day of the week—but everyone in New Orleans is required to try a sazerac at least once.

And now I could rest easy, having done not only my civic duty but treated Taylor to a New Orleans rite of passage.

I’d also wanted him to see the Roosevelt Hotel’s Christmas decorations. The Roosevelt was one of the grand old hotels of the city, and their lobby decorations are truly spectacular. Since we were going to a party at the Joy Theater—a mere block or so from the hotel, I thought, why not kill two birds with one stone? This was Taylor’s second Christmas with us, and I wanted to do it right. We’d already done Celebration in the Oaks at City Park, and I’d loved seeing the beautifully decorated ancient live oak trees through a newbie’s eyes.

I know it’s corny, but I love Christmas.

I love everything about it. I love decorating my apartment. I love picking out presents that are one hundred percent perfect for the person and carefully wrapping it up in beautiful paper, topped with a bow and twining ribbons around the box. I love picking out a tree, and the wonderful smell of pine that permeates everything inside once it’s delivered. I love getting the boxes of ornaments down from the storage closet and adorning the branches with them. I love tinsel and opening a new box of icicles for the branches. I love Christmas cookies and cakes and pies and turkey and celebrating and spending time with people I love.

I even love carols—although I do think that September is a bit early to start playing them unless the intent is to drive people to homicide by December.

While I kept the original backstories of the Grande Dames of New Orleans cast as I had in the original, I changed a lot because I didn’t want those few who had read the original to know the ending. I also wanted to do some fun things with the story, adding in another murder that was completely unconnected to the primary story as well as yet another deep personal dilemma for Scotty that doesn’t get resolved in this story, and trying to keep track of all the crazy things I had going on–as well as the complicated and complex backstories and threads of different subplots; I added another murder for the main story and I wanted to make it a bit more topical, so I added an element of “me too” to the story (in all honesty as I write the current one I wish I hadn’t done this because I can’t just drop it, either, like it never happened), and I found myself having fun with it. This was by far the most complicated and layered Scotty book since probably Mardi Gras Mambo, and this was one I felt very contented about when I turned it into the publisher. Even revisiting it now, as part of the prep for the current one, I kind of am proud of myself for it.

I also set it during Christmas season in New Orleans because I love New Orleans at Christmas-time. It’s one of the few times of the year where I don’t mind that it gets dark so fucking early–because New Orleans has put on her Christmas face and it’s absolutely delightful. One of the things I love most about this crazy city is how everyone here takes decorating so seriously–so seriously they decorate their houses and windows for everything. Jackson Square is stunning with the big red bows tied on the lampposts guarding the gates, as you can see in the gorgeous cover my publisher gave my book (and perhaps the thing about it that make me happiest the most is that one of the lamp’s light is out–just like it would be in real life) and the lights and…sighs happily.

I did think, for a time, about ending the series with this one, but I left the personal story hanging yet again which meant there would be another one–and I honestly don’t know what happened that it took me so long to get around to writing another one, but here we are.

Book of Love

Wednesday and another edition of the biweekly Pay The Bills Day! Woo-hoo! But this is also my last paycheck at my old rate of pay; I am curious to see what my paychecks will look like when they reflect my raise–check back, Constant Reader, in precisely two weeks to find out.

Can you stand the suspense? I barely can.

I was very tired yesterday, and I slept about the same last night so I can also plan on hitting the wall today around three. I took a long lunch yesterday to record Susan Larson’s marvelous radio show The Reading Life, which will air on December 6th, and that was naturally delightful as every moment spent with Susan is. But by the time I got back to the office and got settled back into the seeing clients routine, I was very tired. I had a ZOOM meeting when I got back home last night, which was interesting and fun–it’s always lovely seeing that group of people (queer crime writers! Woo-hoo!)–and then I settled into my chair to watch Reboot and another episode of Diary of a Gigolo, which is just so much fun. I did get some writing done yesterday–terrible writing, I might add–but am hopeful that tonight I’ll get back on track. I feel like I slept about the same last night, waking up several times and never really falling deep asleep again, but this morning so far I feel good. I managed to somehow get quite a bit finished yesterday, which I didn’t think would actually be the case, given how sleepy and tired I was yesterday afternoon, but looking back over the day I can see that yes, indeed, I did get a lot done despite the exhaustion. I am adjusting to the new work week schedule, methinks; tomorrow is my last day in the office and usually I am worn down the day before my last day in the office for the week, so this is a major plus.

And now to consult the to-do list…sigh. It can wait until later, surely?

I don’t know why this morning I feel like I’ve turned some kind of corner, which makes absolutely zero sense, but that’s kind of how I feel; like I’m shaking off some kind of malaise or stupor and my mind is functioning correctly again. It’s entirely possible the booster shot I got on Monday fogged my brain for a few days–I’m blaming the insomnia issues on it for fucking sure–and now this morning that fog has cleared. I don’t know, I really can’t explain it other than that, but this is one of those mornings where I feel like I am mentally rolling up my sleeves and taking a look at all and everything I need to get done and diving in headfirst. LOL, we’ll see how long this feeling lasts, won’t we? But I feel good–and that is reflected in my mood, I guess; I’m in a pretty good mood this morning (at least thus far) but it’s probably too much to hope for that it will last the rest of the day.

Probably not, but you never know.

I was thinking last night–after talking to Susan about the next book (should there be one) in the new series, and of course my copy of Raquel V. Reyes’ second novel arrived yesterday–about how important the second book in a series is, and how much different the second books in both of my series are from the first book in each series. In the first book you have to introduce the characters and their backstories and how they relate to each other (the kind of relationships they have with each other) as well as who your main character is and try to get the reader to relate to them and like them enough to buy into the series as a whole. In the second book, you’ve already done all of this work so all you need is little sound bytes here and there to recap those backstories and so forth and you can spend a lot more time developing your plot and story. Murder in the Rue St. Ann was very different than Murder in the Rue Dauphine; revisiting the Scotty series I can see how much more complicated and layered the story of Jackson Square Jazz was in comparison to Bourbon Street Blues, which had a much simpler plot. Likewise, A Streetcar Named Murder is the launching place for this series, and hopefully it will continue (my second one is tentatively titled The House of the Seven Grables, which will probably be changed by the publisher if there is a second book in the series), and the plot I have in mind for this second Valerie book is a lot more all over the place and complicated–especially as we dig deeper into the Cooper family mystery that was brought to light in the first book.

My favorite part of writing a book is the planning stage, really.

And on that note I am heading into the spice mines. Have a lovely day, Constant Reader, and I will chat with you again tomorrow.

Beautiful Child

GEAUX TIGERS!

It is insanely early to have a kickoff in Tiger Stadium at eleven in the morning–I think I actually went to a game that started this early; I remember we had to get up at eight to get ready and barely managed to get into the stadium and into our seats as the band took the field for Pre-game (always one of the highlights of a game there; if you don’t know what LSU’s Pregame is, it’s that song the band plays that has those four notes–bah, BAH bah bah! (to me it always sounds like Hold That Ti-ger!)–and the entire stadium erupts. I mean, it really does. If you ever have a moment to kill, go to Youtube and search for LSU Marching Band Pre-game–you should immediately recognize the music. But having the game so early for me means I’ll most likely be emotionally and physically drained after it ends, and I’ll probably get sucked into the chair watching games all day (I mean, I should watch the Georgia-Auburn game, even if it is going to be a bloodbath), but hopefully I’ll find some time to make notes and do some reading as well.

I slept very well last night (again), which was really super nice, and we finished Your Honor last night–didn’t see that ending coming, apparently it’s been renewed for a second season–and also started watched this past week’s episode of Bad Sisters–God, how I hate John-Paul–and also caught this weeks Queer for Fear, which focused primarily on James Whale and Alfred Hitchcock, with a lovely section on Anthony Perkins (my God, what a beautiful man he was) and how Psycho essentially ended his career–to this day his failure to even be nominated for an Oscar for that performance is a crime; he should have won; it’s one of the best screen performances of all time–which both Paul and I enjoyed tremendously; I’m also looking forward to more of this documentary series. Yesterday I got my work done and ordered groceries to pick up tomorrow morning; I’m beginning to see this as a marvelous convenience rather than as simple laziness now and I kind of like this because it also keeps me from making impulse buys, which always drives the price up. I did pick up the mail and make a quick stop for a few things at the Fresh Market (they carry Clearly Canadian, which I used to love back in the day, but they never have strawberry, just cherry and blackberry–I always get blackberry), and I made Shrimp Creole for the first time in a very long time; I’d forgotten how marvelous that is. There’s plenty left over for me to take to work this week as well, which is even nicer. Huzzah!

I’m hoping for a lovely, restful, relaxing day today. I’ll probably do some cleaning and organizing during the games–have to do something with all that nervous energy, after all–and tomorrow is going to be a massive work day. I am going to finish Chapter Five tomorrow if it kills me, and possibly do Chapter Six; I have some other things to do as well that I need to add to the list so I don’t forget and wind up fucked. I’m also getting my booster shot on Monday; hope that doesn’t make me feel unwell. If it does, or is anything like the last one, I should just feeling mildly unwell for a day and be over it at that time.

I also picked up Interview with the Vampire to reread again, since it’s Halloween season and all, and the show is airing. I’ve not read Mrs. Rice’s work in a long time–I kind of want to go back and finish reading The Feast of All Saints, although I am sure it’s problematic now, as it is about the Free People of Color before the Civil War–and I’d forgotten how lushly stylized her writing is; I am also probably going to want to revisit The Witching Hour as well before it’s television adaptation starts airing in January. I rather famously didn’t care for this novel the first two times I read it; I finally was enthralled with it upon my third reading, in Hawaii. I read all of her work after that until she switched to Jesus and angels; I never really came back to her when she turned to werewolves before finally coming back to Lestat and vampires. At some point I intend to read the final Lestat novels, and I should probably read The Mummy sequels she co-authored with her son.

I’ve not been feeling terribly creative this past week, despite the need to work on the book as well as the little work I have done on the book, and I am hoping that changing my work schedule will help me to feel somewhat less off-kilter in my life than I’ve been feeling since I started coming in on Fridays and staying home on Mondays. I’ve never really adjusted to it, honestly, and this feels so right, you know? I feel like my life has sort of gotten back on track since this switch was made again. I could be completely wrong; who knows? By Tuesday it’s entirely possible that I might be so tired and exhausted I won’t be able to function the way I should be able to when I get home from the office. But I am hoping that won’t indeed be the case, obviously, and thus far it has made a significant difference in how rested I feel.

Which is a good thing, really.

And on that note, I am going to head into the spice mines. Have a lovely Saturday, Constant Reader–I may be back later, you never know; if not, I’ll chat with you tomorrow.

Can’t Go Back

And here we are on Wednesday again.

It’s really amazing to me how sometimes it feels like the weeks just fly past; I think a lot of it has to do with Monday being my work-at-home day instead of Friday. By the time I come into the office what feels like Monday is actually Tuesday, and then Wednesday I wake up stunned that we’re already in the middle of the week. Maybe I should go back to working at home on Fridays instead? It’s definitely a thought. Working at home on Mondays has really kind of fucked with my sense of time and day and date significantly; not having cable television anymore has also messed with that since I no longer really pay much attention to what day of the week any show I am watching actually airs–I just check my “up next” list on the Apple TV every day and see what’s ready to be watched again.

So weird how my television viewing habits have changed so much since the introduction of Netflix, marathons, and binge-watching. I mean, I used to subscribe to TV Guide, which I don’t think even exists anymore, does it? Ch-ch-ch-changes.

I had a restless night’s sleep last night, spending most of the evening waking up every hour or two all night before the alarm finally went off this morning, so I suspect I will spend most of my day fending off the creep of weariness into my body. It’s very dark outside this morning, too. Heavy heaving sigh. I imagine the time doesn’t change until after Halloween–it’s been getting later and later it seems every year–but this getting up in the dark is very unpleasant and not conducive to me waking up. The weather has remained cool in New Orleans this week, too–not humid, mid to high 70’s, windy but sunny at the same time–which has been a very lovely thing.

I also rewrote Chapter Four yesterday; I took the 1677 words from the other day that were absolutely abysmal, picked them apart and pulled them back together, and wound up with slightly over 3000 words on the chapter yesterday, which was a pleasant surprise, particularly taking into consideration how tired I was when I did get home last night, having run some errands after work. Paul didn’t get home until late, and so we caught this week’s Reboot (seriously, this show is hilarious) and one of Little Demon, an animated Netflix show whose premise is the main character is the anti-Christ; her mother had sex with Satan and now the child is 13 and coming into her powers. It’s slightly twisted, obviously, so we clearly are enamored of it; I’m curious to see where it goes in the rest of the season, plus it’s also short–half hour, tops–which helps somewhat since we are always trying to find something to kill a half an hour with before we got to bed every night, and we should probably check out Abbott Elementary at some point.

But it felt good to start writing the book again yesterday; and it actually flowed relatively easily, too–which is always a plus; it means the well hasn’t run dry quite yet and I can still potentially write books. Saturday the LSU game is at the absurdly early hour of eleven, which means I can probably do things after two when the game is over–like run errands or clean or write–or I can spend the day reading with the football games on the television in the background. I need to finish reading my book because i’d like to revisit some horror this month before the month ends. I got my second monkeypox vaccination yesterday, and now to get the fourth booster for COVID at some point as well as a flu shot. I am hoping that continuing to mask this winter will help me get through any year without getting sick–really, what a difference wearing a mask has made these past few years; other than actually having COVID this summer, I’ve not been ill at all since the pandemic started, really.

Which is something I’ve never really understood about anti-masking, really; why wouldn’t you do something simple that would help you not get sick? Not just with COVID but every other germ and virus out there? I’ll show you libtards by spending the winter dealing with colds and the flu! FREEDOM! (Not to mention that even saying “libtard” is offensive to disabled people–I’m not insulted when someone calls me that, frankly, because it says everything about the speaker and nothing about me–because it’s a derivative of the pejorative term “retard,” which we really shouldn’t be saying in 2022 anyway. Ah, yes, the United States in the twenty-first century, when the words liberty and freedom have been so bastardized and robbed of meaning that now it essentially means I can be a complete and total asshole and tell OTHER people how to live!

Heavy heaving sigh. And on that lovely note, I am heading into the spice mines. Have a lovely Wednesday, Constant Reader.

Walk a Thin Line

Tuesday morning with dark pressing against the windows. When does this hateful Daylight Savings Time shit happen this year, anyway? The extra hour of sleep in the fall is always lovely and nice; it’s the paying it back in the spring that totally sucks. Ah, well. I slept well last night and feel fairly wide awake (I actually wrote wild first; wild awake sounds like it should be a thing, really) and am looking forward to another exciting day at work. I recently had my job changed a bit–I got a substantial raise and a new job description, that I have to sign today at the office–and the new stuff goes into effect with the start of the new pay period on Friday. It was very nice–it was the meeting I had yesterday–to have years of dedication to my employer acknowledged and appreciated (I knew I was appreciated, but it’s nice to get financial and employee level recognition as well). It will help me get these bills paid off faster as well, which is kind of nice. I’ve not made enough progress on that front as I would like this year, but it looks like I’ll get further ahead by the end of the year.

I also wrote about 1677 words yesterday; the first work on the Scotty book in weeks, and yes, it was literally along the lines of pulling teeth. The gears had rusted and were most definitely creaking as I tried to get them moving yesterday. It wasn’t easy, but I am hoping that getting started will help grease the wheels somewhat and will help me get more done, bit by bit, day by day, until it is finally finished. I always, every time, forget that things don’t have to be perfect the first time through–even though time is running out already–and I am trying to not to let the impending deadline make me crazy.

We watched a few more episodes of Your Honor last night, which completely changed course and direction in a completely unexpected way in last night’s two episodes; I’m not really sure what is going on with the show–it’s almost like they took on a new show-runner and writers after episode 4. It was a significant change in tone and direction, and a new character was added out of nowhere in a weird transitional method of getting to the new direction/new story. It’s clever enough–although we did have to laugh because (and yes, it’s a New Orleans thing) that he was trying to drop off the extortion/blackmail money during the Red Dress Run, which is always on a Saturday in August which means it’s hellish outside, temperature wise…but on the show, it was clearly a weekday for some reason because he went to the bank first to remove the money, and no one was hot or sweating and it looked kind of chilly out, to be honest. (For the record, I put the Red Dress Run into Garden District Gothic as the opening sequence; Scotty taking Taylor to his first Red Dress Run.) But it’s entertaining enough, and yes, I am aware how snooty we who live here are about shows and movies set and filmed here but not in a bad way; I personally just get amused by the bizarre geography they use for them. But like I said yesterday, it’s about shots that reflect New Orleans to the viewers, and to do that sometimes you have to create a new geography that makes no sense to us, but works for everyone else.

There has been an endless on-going thing on social media over the last few days about Billy Eichner’s tweets about his disappointment in his new film Bros not performing as well at the box office as he had hoped and the studio had projected; basically, it boiled to him saying straight people didn’t show up for a gay movie. I get his frustration as a queer artist; queer authors could all easily say we would be more successful if straight readers bought our books, too; it’s not like a lot of straights show up for us, either. But…I don’t know how true that is. I don’t know who reads my books or who my core audience is; I assume it’s gay men, with a smattering of lesbians and straight women thrown in for good measure, based on social media interactions and responses to my blog posts. (And yes, I know I am being heterophobic in assuming there are very few, if any, straight male readers of my work. I am okay with this completely because I really don’t write with straight men in mind, to be honest.) Again, I get the disappointment–and some people on Twitter do miss the point entirely; Bros was the first major studio film release about gay men starring gay men and employing almost entirely queer people behind the scenes, which does make the movie groundbreaking in some ways (bringing up the success of other gay films from big studios is an apples to oranges thing; since most of those were straight written, straight produced and starred straight people in a queer film targeting to straight people). So, yeah, I get why Billy Eichner is disappointed…I don’t know that I would have taken the disappointment to social media, though. (Oh, I know the answer to that, who am I fooling? You never take disappointment to social media unless you enjoy feeling like a carcass being picked apart by vultures.) I’m not a particular fan of his; as someone whose persona also is drily funny sarcastic bitch, he always seems angry to me, and anger makes me uncomfortable rather than amused. I’ll watch the movie when it’s streaming, but I do think the lower box office than predicted might have to do with people not being comfortable going back to a movie theater just yet; and while I recognize this as an assumption, I feel pretty safe in concluding that the Venn diagram of people who would tend (or be interested potentially) to see a gay rom-com in the theater and those who are still taking COVID precautions seriously is pretty much one big circle, you know? I think Fire Island did really well for Hulu over the summer, and we don’t know that Bros is a flop yet, either. I don’t see the underperformance of Bros as necessarily the death knell of queer cinema from the major studios, either; yes, it won’t help the next film get produced but I don’t think it will stop the next one from being produced. And for the last time, it’s impossible for any queer film to represent every queer experience in the world because every queer person has a different experience. No one film (or television show, for that matter) can adequately represent the entire community, and we need to get past that kind of thinking–was Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? representative of all straight married couples?

I don’t know why we hold queer films (and television series, for that matter) to higher standards than we do straight films and series, but probably because there are fewer of them, and less still that are written, produced and star actual queer people. My usual issues with queer film isn’t that they aren’t representative, but mainly because they just aren’t very good (the few that are good are quite marvelous, actually–I will always hold that the best gay movie is Beautiful Thing)…but that’s a discussion for another time.

And on that note, I am going to head into the spice mines. Have a lovely Tuesday, Constant Reader!

Garden District Gothic

Oh, Scotty VII, what an interesting path you took to publication.

Back when ebooks and Kindles first started to be a thing, they rather revolutionized publishing. This new technology rang the death knell on some independent book stores as well as some small presses, and it was considered the great equalizer: you no longer needed to follow the long-established path to publication that went writer/agent/publisher; and just having an agent was no guarantee your book would ever see print and if it did, that it would sell. You no longer needed a publisher to put your book out and get it to readers; all you needed to do was get a cover designed and format your manuscript and upload it. This excited a lot of people; I was one of them, but still approached the entire thing very cautiously. I have never had a problem with people who elect to self-publish their work rather than follow the traditional path; I certainly never followed the traditional path or ran my career the way I was supposed to, at least according to almost every author I knew.

But ultimately, for me, the ebook revolution and becoming a publisher/author hybrid seemed not only like a risk but a time-consuming one. I didn’t have the time available to market the books I was traditionally publishing the way I should, let alone having the time to have to do all the marketing myself.

But I was curious, and remained open-minded. A friend started her own company and wanted me to write some things for her–short, more like novellas than novels–and since I’d always wanted to spin Paige off into her own series (despite being concerned about writing a mainstream type book from a woman’s perspective) and so I thought, well, here’s a chance to try something new and different. I wound up writing two of these and was partly through a third when I began to realize that even with an independent publisher doing some of the work, I just didn’t have the time or money or incentive to work any harder at marketing these books than I already was–and they needed more attention and promotion than I was able to give them, so we decided to end the business relationship, the already done books came down from sales sites, and that was the end of that.

I did eventually slap up Bourbon Street Blues as an ebook on Amazon, and it’s done okay for me; I’ve not promoted it at all but copies sell every month–but I am not getting rich, either. I also have a longer short story up as an e-original (but it’s also in my print collection Survivor’s Guilt and Other Stories) and yes, I know I need to get Jackson Square Jazz up (one of these days), and perhaps when I’ve retired and have more time, I’ll explore the self-publishing option again just for the hell of it.

But there I was, with a partially completed manuscript and it was a very fun story; I hated wasting it (it was called The Mad Catter), and so, with a little bit of tweaking, I turned it into the seventh Scotty book, and renamed it Garden District Gothic.

I really love the cover Bold Strokes gave me for it, too:

You know you live in New Orleans when you leave your house on a hot Saturday morning in August for drinks wearing a red dress.

It was well over ninety degrees, and the humidity had tipped the heat index up to about 110, maybe 105 in the shade. The hordes of men and women in red dresses were waving handheld fans furiously as sweat ran down their bodies. Everywhere you looked, there were crowds of people in red, sweating but somehow, despite the ridiculous heat, having a good time. I could feel the heat from the pavement through my red-and-white saddle shoes and was glad I’d decided wearing hose would be a bad idea. The thick red socks I was wearing were hot enough, thank you, and were soaked through. They were new, so were probably dying my ankles, calves, and feet pink. But it was for charity, I kept reminding myself as I greeted friends and people whose names I couldn’t remember but whose faces looked familiar as we worked our way up and down and around the Quarter.

Finally, I had enough around noon and decided to call it a day.

“I don’t think I’ve ever been so hot in my life, and I grew up in Alabama,” my sort of nephew, Taylor Wheeler, said in his soft accent, wiping sweat from his forehead as we trudged down Governor Nicholls Street on our way home.

“It hasn’t been this hot in a while,” I replied, trying really hard not to laugh. I’d been forcing down giggles pretty much all day since he came galloping down the back steps the way he always does and I got my first look at his outfit. “But the last few summers have been mild—this is normal for August, usually.” It was true—everyone in town was complaining about the heat like it was something unusual, but we hadn’t had our usual hellish summer weather in a couple of years.

Last summer had been not only mild but dry, with little humidity and practically no rain—which was unheard of. Usually it rains every day around three in the summer, when the humidity has gotten so thick it turns to rain.

“I don’t even want to think about how much sweat is in my butt crack,” he complained, furiously waving the fan he’d picked up somewhere, trying to create a breeze.

I gave up trying to fight it and just gave in to the laughter.

One of the primary problems of turning The Mad Catter into Garden District Gothic was that the book was intended originally to be a sequel to a pair of books that no longer existed; vanished forever into the ether. I had established a character in earlier books of the series who was supposed to take front and center in this one, but I no longer had the back story and was facing the issue of how do I introduce this woman into Scotty’s world? And it was important, because the case involved a long ago murder that took place in this woman’s Garden District mansion–she didn’t own it at the time; she bought it from the original family that owned it, and owned it at the time of the unsolved murder–but I decided the easiest way to do this was make the woman a friend of Scotty’s older sister, which is how he knew her; and she had been a member of the cast of a reality-TV show called Grande Dames of New Orleans, which had been the centering of the previous book in the now-defunct series. I always thought the Grande Dames (obviously, my version of the Real Housewives franchises) was a clever idea and a fun one to explore as well as poke fun at in a fictional setting, and I hated wasting in a series that no one could access anymore. So I decided to keep Serena, and mention that she was in the cast of the new show which hadn’t started filming yet, and she had bought this big house as a centerpiece for her to be filmed in from the show, giving up her luxurious condo in One River Place. (This also gave me the opening to center the next Scotty book in the Grande Dames show.) The party that now opened the book was a housewarming party, so Serena could show off her new manse with the checkered past.

I had also created a character in the Paige series to serve as a kind of nemesis for her, a true crime writer named Jerry Channing, whom eventually I used as the impetus for getting the plot started in The Orion Mask. Jerry became rich and famous writing a book about the infamous, unsolved murder called Garden District Gothic, which in the Paige series seemed like a Scotty title to me, and I used it as a wink to those who were familiar with the Scotty series…and so, in writing about Scotty and the gang solving this old notorious murder, why wouldn’t I call the book Garden District Gothic, since it really is a Scotty title after all?

The murder was, of course, based on the Jon-Benet Ramsey murder that dominated the media and culture for so long back in the day. I just took the set-up of the story from that real-life case and started making up my own characters and backstories for them and went with it from there. The one thing that always bothered me the most about the case was the fact that people viewed the Ramsey family as speaking to the lawyers before calling the police as suspicious; no, it’s actually smart. Sure, it made them look “guilty” in the press (with all those headlines in the tabloids screaming this conclusively proves one of the family did it!!!! Who calls their lawyer first??? To which I again repeat, people who are fucking smart call their lawyer first. Period.), but it was the smart thing to do; someone had the presence of mind to realize that the most obvious suspects in the murder of a child are going to be the immediate family, and why–in a distraught state of grief over your child’s brutal murder–you would need to have a lawyer present when you’re being questioned by the police so you don’t say anything that could be misconstrued as an admission of guilt when you are not in fact guilty.

Always, always, always call the lawyers first. Always. If i have learned anything from my extensive reading of true crime and study of crime fiction, it is “never talk to the cops without a lawyer, especially if you are innocent.”

I was pleased with it when I was finished with it, but I’d kind of like to revise the ending a bit.

And of course, writing it left me with the decision of whether to reuse my Grande Dames of New Orleans reality show for the next Scotty book.