And it’s Sunday morning again, and Sparky was rather insistent on being fed this morning, so I am up earlier than I have been the rest of the weekend. Which is fine, I feel rested and good this morning. I didn’t get nearly as much done yesterday as I would have liked, of course; but I did do some chores and read for a little bit, which was nice. It was a mellow day, really, and I ran my errand in the morning, cooked out for the afternoon, and so have some writing and reading and cleaning to do today. I hate when LSU plays a noon game, because the rest of the day afterwards seems so long…LSU did win, beating 2-8 Arkansas by one (!) point in Baton Rouge. The game seemed kind of dull to me, but I wasn’t ensconced in my chair during the game with my blood pressure elevating. I might rewatch it at some point this morning, or have it on while I read. Alabama lost a shocker to Oklahoma at home yesterday, and Georgia humiliated Texas last night–Mississippi depending on a lot of luck to beat Florida. It’s been a hot minute, too, since a team beat Alabama in back-to-back years. I imagine their coach is under fire this morning.
I downloaded another audiobook for the drive to Kentucky next week; I got the third Mary Russell novel by MWA Grand Master Laurie R. King, A Letter of Mary, and I am very excited to listen to it. Her Mary Russell/Sherlock Holmes series is magnificent, and an excellent replacement for one of my favorite series of all time, Elizabeth Peters’ Amelia Peabody1 series. Mary’s voice and character remind me of my beloved Peabody, it’s almost like getting another book by the late Ms. Peters. I’ve loved everything I’ve read that Laurie writes; again, just like Peters. I also have a shit ton of audiobooks on my phone I’ve not listened to (why do I hoard books in every form in which they appear? Why am I like this?); but I like the idea of listening to King on the way up and Donna Andrews (whose Meg also reminds me of Peabody2) on the way back. That sounds like an absolutely delightful plan to me, at any rate. I also need to get braced for the cold.
We also watched the rhythm dance competition for Skate America; we’ll probably watch the free dance and the men’s final this afternoon. I also would love to get back to Lazarus, and am thinking about watching this new Frankenstein. But I also need to get some reading and writing, and get caught up on the news. It’s interesting watching Fox and the White House and their allies turning on each other, isn’t it? Explaining why fifteen isn’t as bad as five or eight for child rape? So much evil and nastiness being exposed to the disinfecting power of sunlight at long last. Can we at least stop ceding the moral high ground to the child rapist party? When this menace and disaster are finally over, there needs to be some serious accountability…or the cycle will begin all over again. There should have been tribunals after the Civil War, and there should have been again after civil rights and integration. It does not speak well of our country that we never want to deal with accountability…and seriously, there should have been hearings after we dropped two atomic bombs on Japan.3
I really get angry when I think about how the public school system of the 1960s indoctrinated me into American exceptionalism, and how it’s taken up so much of my time as an adult unlearning that bullshit. But at least I recognized that I needed to rethink much of everything I was taught to believe growing up; which so many never, ever do.
And that’s another newsletter essay, isn’t it? Heavy sigh.
Sorry this is so brief, but there really isn’t much to report this morning. So I am going to go to my chair with my coffee and read for a bit while catching up on the news, and then I am going to clean and write. Have a lovely Sunday, everyone, and I’ll be back tomorrow.
Pharaoh Akhenaten, the heretic
I really need to do a newsletter about Elizabeth Peters/Barbara Michaels. ↩︎
I really should also do a newsletter about those three women. ↩︎
To this day, we remain the only nation to use weapons of mass destruction on another. We really cannot climb onto the moral high horse with anyone, can we? ↩︎
Wednesday! Wasn’t sure I was going to make it this far, to be honest. But I’ve put in two full days at the office, have started pulling the house back together and making my life orderly again. I need to be orderly in order to feel settled enough to write, for one thing, and when my house is out of order I get antsy and uncomfortable and anxious. The house is filthy, so I am going to spend some time on Saturday cleaning and getting everything back into the kind of order it needs to be in, you know? It makes me feel more content somehow, and trust me, my workspace is an utter disaster area. Sigh. Sparky, of course, is no help.
I was going through my short story files last night, and I really do want to write another New Orleans Sherlock story–“The Adventure of the Voodoo Queen’s Necklace”–about the great hurricane of 1916. That will predate the one I’ve already published (“The Affair of the Purloined Rentboy”), so some things that come out in that story will still be unknown in the new one. I’m getting excited about writing again, which is a very good thing, methinks. I think maybe the illness was kind of the enforced slow down I needed? I was getting pretty burnt out as it was, and sometimes I just need to chill out and let the batteries recharge. I did manage to make it through another full day at work yesterday, but the fatigue level was plenty high by the time I got home from work. But I managed to get things done, which was lovely (again, Sparky was no help at all) and we then settled in to watch Andor–which is amazing. I wanted all of Kyril’s clothes. I’ll probably talk more about that sometime, how much I loved the show, that is.
I was very tired when I got home last night–so tired. I did manage to work on the kitchen and make dinner–always a plus–and yes, I’m fidgety and unable to keep still (I guess I had enough of that in the hospital), so am always getting up to do something. I wasn’t able to read last night, unfortunately, because I am getting back into Christa Faust’s amazing The Get Off (there really is no other creative force and voice in the world than hers), so maybe tonight when I get home. I have to get the mail, too, and was thinking about stopping at Yogurtland, which is near the post office; I love soft serve frozen yogurt and should stop there more often. My appetite is back (with a vengeance) so I don’t think I’ll have too much trouble getting the thirty pounds back on. My skin has also dehydrated and become ashy and flakey, so I am going to have to start using a moisturizer.
This morning’s coffee is tasting better–I was worried I had lost my taste for it this week as it’s been tasting terrible–but I also changed the filter in the Keurig and that probably has helped some on that score. I am feeling a lot better, if still weak and fatigued, which is a relief. I am eating normally again (although as I said, hungry all the time), which is great. I need to eat more healthily, but I’ll worry about that when I start gaining weight again. I’m still under 190, which feels weird and yes, I look very gaunt and skeletal. But there are worse things, and at least I am on the mend at last, right?
And on that note, I am heading into the spice mines. Have a lovely Wednesday, Constant Reader, and I’ll be back tomorrow morning.
David Florentine is a local photographer who takes incredible images of New Orleans. Follow him on social media!
And another Wednesday Pay the Bills Day has dawned anew. It rained over night, and I suspect we’re going to be getting a lot more rain over the next few days; the weather forecast certainly believes it to be so. I do love rain, and outside of the constant fear of flooding out the car, I don’t even mind driving in it. There’s something about being warm and cozy and comfortable while everything outside is getting wet that just makes my entire body relax. I remember thinking about this when I was a kid once–I was in the car, we were heading for Alabama from up north, it was raining outside and I had a blanket wrapped around me while I was reading The Mystery of Cobbett’s Island, which opens with Trixie and her Bob-White friends in a station wagon in the rain heading for the ferry to the island. Ever since then, whenever it rains all I want to do is curl up with a book under a blanket. I it rains a lot this weekend, I should get a lot of reading handled.
I was a bit tired and drained when I got home from work last night. I did a load of laundry and hung out with Sparky for most of the evening while I scribbled in my journal while doing 1970’s research on Youtube for my next book. I also worked on the book some last night, and feel a lot better about what I am doing. The Imposter Syndrome has been finally chased away by the need to tell this story and develop these characters, and that’s always a good sign. I also thought about that Sherlock story a lot more, too, and may even start writing it this weekend, one never knows. I also figured out how to solve the problem of another short story that’s been bedeviling me for over ten years, and I want to include it in my collection. I still haven’t made a to-do list, so I seem to be floundering around looking for something to do every day but can’t remember what I need to do, and that’s always a problem. I also need to make sure I update the bills list before Monday, too–but that will have to wait until I pay the bills and wait for everything to update. I know Entergy is due today, which absolutely must be paid; the summer is the only time I really don’t care about my carbon footprint.
And football season is drawing closer with every passing day.
Sigh.
Politics and the news continue to be dumpster fires and I really need to avoid social media. I don’t know why I let people infuriate me on social media, but I do, and it’s dumb. What do I care about a total stranger’s beliefs and values? Sure, I hate racism and the phobias and misogyny and fascism as much as any sentient human being, but you’re never going to change someone’s mind on social media when most people are there to provoke anger and arguments and I keep falling for the bait. Social media hasn’t been fun in nearly a decade, and it continues to get worse with every passing day; but we’ve all become addicted to it and I need to step away from it. Publishing and publishers have been insisting for quite some time that we authors need to be there and build a following and so forth to market our books and sell copies, but is that really effective? I think maybe the next time I have a book coming out, I may invest in some ads on social media and see if that makes the needle move at all…it may also bring trolls and assholes in its wake, as well.
And I checked the weather and we are not only in a heat advisory but also rain through next week with thunderstorms every day through the weekend. Woo-hoo! Definitely a good stay inside and read forecast. I really need to get going on my reading…but it’s hard to read when you’re writing something new, at least for me, at least now. I don’t know if I stopped reading when I was writing before, but I don’t think that is the case. I think my abilities to do everything that I was able to do before has slowed down and I don’t have the brain function anymore to juggle many different projects the way that I used to, and it’s also nice to finally be in a place where I can primarily focus my brainpower entirely on the writing without it being diluted by other responsibilities. I like that idea an awful lot, quite frankly.
And on that note I am going to get cleaned up and head into the spice mines. I may be back later as there are some drafts I need to finish–they’re building up again, and I don’t like that one bit–but you never know. But have a lovely middle of the week, Constant Reader, and I always do appreciate it when you check in on me, so thank you again.
Sunday morning and I slept pretty well. Sparky of course annoyed me out of bed to feed him around six, and then I did go back to bed for two more hours. Our big day of errands wore us both out yesterday, and I also just realized the primary thing I went to Costco for? I didn’t get. AUGH. Oh, well, it’s just sweet-and-low packets; I can get some anywhere and then go for the three year supply the next time we head out there. Still irritating, though. After we got home and put everything away, we settled in to finish Vigil, which I greatly enjoyed, and then we moved on to a rather clever slasher flick called Bodies Bodies Bodies, and then we tried Baby Reindeer, which was very strange and really just kind of sad. I don’t think we’re going to continue with it, but it was something different, to be sure.
Yesterday wasn’t a total wash, just as today won’t be. It may be Paul’s birthday–I’m going to get us a pizza for dinner, and maybe rent something to watch, lie Dune Part II–but I can get some things done this morning before he gets up. I’m also not going to wake him up until he wants to get up, and I also promised to make him waffles, which I’ve not done in so long it’s almost shameful, frankly. Paul is 61 today, and I will be sixty-three in a mere four months. I did make some writing notes yesterday, and of course I was also thinking a lot most of the day about the things I’m working on. I also recognize my incredible skill at rationalization here as well…no one can rationalize or justify the way I can when it comes to excuses for not writing. I also downloaded some biographies of King James I–the influence of Mary and George, no doubt–but I am not entirely sure why I’ve avoided biographies of King James before. I have a lifelong interest in both his mother (Mary Queen of Scots) and his predecessor (Elizabeth I), as well as his Stuart descendants; yet have always avoided King James. I’m not sure why that is; but other queer kings and royals have often been of interest to me, but James didn’t come to a bad end the way most of the others did and so can be considered a successful queer King. (Frederick the Great is another.) It also seems like this Elizabethan/Jacobean era was rife with sodomy all the way through to the eighteenth centiury, both in England and France. The last son of Catherine de Medici, and the last Valois king of France, was gay (Henri III); so was the brother of Louis XIV and one of his illegitimate sons, the Duc de Valentinois; and of course James I’s great-granddaughter Queen Anne was a big ole lesbian. The queers disappear from European royal history for a while, certainly in England and France in the eighteenth century. I’ve always wanted to write about Louis XIV’s brother, and it may be interesting to write about Henri III from the point of view of one of his mignons. The French court in the 1580’s was a hotbed of intrigue, conspiracy, and murder; a very turbulent period I’ve always wanted to write about.
I’ve also come to realize that I need to be more ambitious with my writing rather than saying oh that’s too complicated or too hard or too difficult for me to write. I’ve been putting off my historical interest writing for quite some time, always thinking that someday I’ll feel competent in my skills to try it. It’s actually a cop-out; I should have written some of these years ago, or at least got started. My Sherlock story (still so incredibly proud of it) was my first real historical story (one written in a period of time I was not alive and cannot remember), and all of my fears about it were so clearly misplaced. You don’t have to know a period so intimately that you might as well have lived then in order to write about it. How much research is too much research? The difference between a short story and a novel, of course, are significant–clearly, you don’t need to know as much with a short story as you would with a novel–but again, how much is not enough and how much is too much? The problem (for me, at any rate) is research is like planting seeds–more ideas grow the more research I do, it’s an ADHD thing, I’m pretty sure. But I am definitely going to start the research for my seventeenth century novel, methinks; I love history, so why not? I can scratch two interests at the same time.
Saturday morning I will leave for Alabama for Decoration Day, or what I always thought it was called, The First Sunday in May. That’s what it’s always been called, it’s definitely what my grandmothers and mother called it, and that’s how it’s lodged in my memory banks. I’m going to help my dad put out the flowers and clean the graves, and then on Monday morning I’ll follow him north to Kentucky. It’ll be a nice week away, and I am going to try to get some work done and a lot of reading done while I am there. (Dad called it Decoration Day in an email the other day, and I thought, well, that makes a better name for it but for me, it will always be called The First Sunday in May.) I did notice last year that the only people out doing it were my age or older, so it’s probably one of those county customs that is dying out in these modern days of the Internet, cell phones, and streaming. A pity, to be sure, but sometimes traditions do die out. “The old ways”, as they say in creepy tones in Gothic novels that I love so much. I also imagine my creativity is going to explode while in Alabama as it always does.
And on that note, I am going to eat breakfast, get cleaned up, and head into the spice mines for the day. I may be back later, one never can be certain–but if not, have a lovely Sunday, Constant Reader, and I’ll check in with you again later.
Good morning, Tuesday, and back to the office today. I am very glad that I took yesterday off, as I was completely exhausted. Once I finished my blog yesterday morning, I started trying to get caught up on everything that had slid over the weekend (dishes, laundry, etc.) but ran out of steam around eleven and was so tired I ached. So, no errands, no gym, no writing, not much of anything was truly done yesterday, but I was so tired I was fine with it. I am still fine with it this morning, frankly. I slept deeply and well last night, and of course, was very relaxed and comfortable this morning and didn’t want the night to end. But I am awake, my brain is coming alive and my coffee is tasting pretty good this morning. I am not sure what my day at the office is going to look like yet but I’ll let it be a surprise. I will have to pick up the mail today after work, but that’s fine.
I’ll probably snap back to normalcy tomorrow morning. I also have a lot of email that has accumulated since Friday to take care of, too. Heavy sigh.
But I still feel a little charged from the weekend, even if my own batteries are running low a bit. My legs and back don’t ache, for one thing, and my mind feels a bit less foggy than it did yesterday. Poor Paul got home yesterday afternoon and collapsed on the couch, from which he’s only moved to go to the bathroom or get something to eat or drink, so I hope he gets some seriously good rest today. (We watched the world skating championships and the SEC gymnastics championships before I went to bed.) I just didn’t have the energy to write yesterday, which was okay. I know I have a lot to do in order to get caught up in any way, but any work I would have done yesterday would have been terrible.
I did come up with some ideas for short stories over the weekend–not exactly what I want or need at the moment, but hey. I’ve been wanting to do more “Sherlock in 1916 New Orleans stories”; perhaps even a collection, and so it was kind of cool to come up with titles over the weekend (there’s a Sherlock novella I want to write, too, which would make the collection even more fun). I don’t need more ideas any more than I need a deep gaping hole in my skull, but the Sherlock thing is one I already had so I am not counting it as new but rather filling in the blanks for something already started.
But I am excited to roll up my sleeves and dive into the book again. The weekend was the kind of lovely recharge I need every now and then; which is what you can get from going to these types of events as a writer. Being around people who appreciate literature and writing and reading is a dream for me, and I love these occasional reminders that I am a part of the writing/publishing community–it’s very easy to feel removed from it when you don’t live near your writer friends and are only around them for brief spurts of times at conferences. There’s never enough time to talk to everyone, to catch up with everyone that I want to, as well as meet new people whose work you’ve yet to discover, and how wonderful it is to see the starry-eyed authors-to-be when they come to something like S&S for the first time. I saw several of those, and it’s also lovely that the short story and poetry anthologies are, in some cases, the writer’s first publication…and their reading at the festival is their first time doing so. I was very impressed by the poetry I heard Saturday night, particularly after talking to Steven Reigns about poetry on Friday night. I think I’ll start with T. S. Eliot’s The Waste Land.
And so now it is time to officially return to the spice mines. I doubt I’ll be back later, but then again, one never knows. Have a lovely Tuesday, Constant Reader!
Monday morning and back to the office afternoon a really lovely weekend, which wasn’t nearly long enough to satisfy anyone, really. I am wide awake, which is lovely, and I thought I wasn’t sleeping well last night–but this morning I feel rested and fine. Odd, right?
I really need to buckle down and start writing. I started three short stories ideas yesterday (“Passenger to Franklin”, “The Adventure of the Kaiser’s Spy1,” and “The Haunted Bridge,” for specifics) and I reviewed some of what I have already written on the next book, which was interrupted by the surgery. It’s now extended deadline is April 1, so yes, I need to get cracking. I did get a lot of work on the apartment done this weekend, and I was correct that I had ordered the wrong smart keyboard folio for my iPad, and Apple no longer makes them for mine because it’s too old. They recommended Amazon or eBay; I found one on eBay and ordered it so it will come later this week, which is terrific. Once I got home from refunding and returning that magic keyboard, I decided to go ahead and order two things from the Apple store to be delivered–an external wireless keyboard for my desktop, that is wider than the basic one and has the number pad, too, and a super storage flash drive that will also connect to my phone and iPad…and that resulted in an insane Kafka-like experience. The delivery was supposed to come between 3 and 5; their website showed that “Orrin” picked up my delivery at 4:46, and about half an hour later it was marked “out for delivery”–and the stuff can’t just be dropped off; it has to be handed to a person so you have to be available to go meet the delivery when it arrives. The website never updated, and the delivery never came. I finally connected with Apple Support on my phone, which was insane. Their records showed the driver had never picked it up–and it couldn’t be rescheduled for delivery today, all they could do was cancel it and refund the money. I don’t know if the “support person” I was communicating with was a real person or not, or if it was AI. Whoever it was, either they were AI, or English wasn’t their first language. I still don’t understand why they couldn’t just reschedule the delivery till today, but here we are, you know?
Thanks anyway, Apple. I have since decided that it was frivolous to buy those two items, so thank you for fucking this up and saving me quite a bit of money.
I did spend some time working on the apartment and it’s starting to look better. Hilariously, all the changes I made in the reorganization (the drawers, shelves in the kitchen, etc.) have already been forgotten so I have to go looking for things now–right now I can’t find where I put the printer ink–but that’s okay. I guess I am gaslighting myself!
I did spend some time this weekend reading Norah Lofts’ The Little Wax Doll, which I remember reading in junior high but as I read it, it feels very new to me. I don’t remember anything about it; maybe I never read it in the first place but had a copy which I started to read but never finished? Regardless, I am definitely enjoying it. It’s slow-burn horror, which is starting to slowly ratchet up (it’s one of those “rural communities that seem perfect but always have a dark secret” stories). I like Lofts’ writing style, which was more common in the mid-twentieth century work–she has a point of view character, Miss Mayfield, but her third person is removed; like a cross between an omniscient narrator and tight pov. It has a very Gothic feel to it that I really like, and I am looking forward to finishing it at some point.
We also started watching an Australian show, The Tourist, starring the always fun to watch Jamie Dornan (sigh) as a man who is in a car accident and gets amnesia, but he has to figure out who he is because a lot of people are trying to kill him. We’re two episodes into the first season (and there are two seasons thus far) so I am guessing he doesn’t find out for quite some time….
And on that note, I am heading into the spice mines. Have a marvelous Monday, Constant Reader, and I may be back later; one never can be sure.
Yes, this is a Sherlock in 1916 New Orleans stories. ↩︎
Sunday morning and I managed to get a lot done yesterday while watching games occasionally. I got bored watching Georgia throttle Florida, laughed about the Kansas win over Oklahoma, watched Tulane almost blow a significant lead and lose to Rice, and got bored with Tennessee-Kentucky so switched over to Elité on Netflix–and this seventh season is simply terrible. We have one more episode in this season and it’s over, and I can’t say I’m sorry to see it go.
But I did get a lot done yesterday. I cleaned. I ran errands,,,and I worked on the filing. Yes, there’s still work to be done, but my workspace no longer looks like I need to. just take a flamethrower to it, and even the laundry room is beginning to look like it’s more together than it should be. I do have to do some refiling, but everything is properly sorted and where it needs to be, if not alphabetized properly. I also discovered a lot of duplicate files–I am sure there are even more to be found, once the filing truly starts getting compiled and sorted properly. I also need for some of these files to just go away; I am never going to get to all of these ideas and I am never going to write all these stories and novels or essays and nonfiction books, either. But which ones to keep, which ones to abandon for good? I’ve been saving ideas and files and stories and scenes and characters for well over forty years now; you can only imagine how much I’ve forgotten about that are buried deep within this insane file-hoarding situation; it’s almost as bad as my book situation.
But getting all this clutter and debris sorted and put into a semblance of order also helped me get focused more–I think perhaps that’s been part of the problem with focusing on writing anything, really; knowing how out of control the filing had gotten and not knowing where anything was, or what I was working on could be found, and so forth. I’m going to try to get back to work on my next book today–after I get some more of these blog entry drafts completed and posted–and I am also going to try to work on the files some more. I decided that I am not, after all, going to be able to get my story “The Blues Before Dawn” finished in time to submit to the Bouchercon anthology, so it’ll go back into the files for now for a while. I never could quite get the story write, but that opening–my main character walking home in the misty morning hours of the Quarter while listening to someone playing the blues on a saxophone on a balcony, hidden away in the fog. I love that image, and I know that my main character is an apprentice waiter at Galatoire’s and sometimes turns tricks for money at Ma Butler’s bordello in Storyville; I also know it’s a Sherlock Holmes story from the perspective of someone who has a crush on Mr. Holmes–and now has to depend on Sherlock to save him from wrongly being accused of murder. The rest? Not so much…and it’s due on Tuesday, so that’s not going to happen. A pity, yes, but a Sherlock story from the perspective of a sometime male harlot was a long shot for the Bouchercon anthology anyway.
I did start reading The Lonely Ghost by Mike Ford, which is quite delightful, along with a reread of Ammie Come Home by Barbara Michaels (also one of my favorite books of all time, and definitely one of the greatest ghost stories of all time) when I had a few down moments to spend (I’ll get back to The Lonely Ghost later on this morning), and I also have to make a cheesecake this morning and get the white bean chicken chili started so it’ll be ready for tonight and the rest of the week, of course. Halloween is going to be one of those frantic unsettling days, but that’s okay; I can make it through it all.
I slept really well last night, which was lovely; my sleep lately has been pretty marvelous, honestly. Relaxing in the evenings last week, letting the anxiety not get to me, and getting good night’s sleeps this past week was really kind of lovely and nice. I also slept late this morning, opting to stay in bed later than I usually do because it frankly felt nice, you know? Today I am also planning some self-care and grooming, which will be nice. Maybe even take a walk later in the day, when it starts cooling down? Although without the humidity yesterday’s low eighties felt marvelously and delightfully cool.
And on that note, the spice ain’t gonna mine itself, so off I go. Have a marvelous Sunday, Constant Reader, and I’ll check in with you again.
I withdrew a short story I had submitted to a magazine in September of 2022; thirteen months is more than enough time to decide whether or not you want a story or not, and if you haven’t gotten to it by now, well, how long do you need? There’s a serious conversation about short story publishing that needs to be had at some point–but I think that aspect of the business isn’t taken as seriously as “book” publishing, and there aren’t many people who primarily focus on the short form for the abuses of writers that occur in that small part of the business to really be brought to public attention because, let’s face it, nobody really cares. I know that one of the big name prestigious crime short story publishers always takes twelve to fourteen months to respond to submissions…and when you know that going in, that’s one thing. This market I’ve published in before and it’s never taken even a fraction of this long to get a response to a submission; it had been pending on Submittable since the day after I clicked “submit.” It may be right for another market I am looking at right now–and I had wanted to include it in my next short story collection as a republished story. Heavy heaving sigh.
Maybe someday I will do a blog post about the slog publishing short stories can often prove to be. I was in one anthology that sat on my story (and everyone else’s) for at least three years (more like four, if not five); finally released the book but never sent me a print copy (I did get the electronic one) and I never did get the really nice check they offered me to get me to write the story. There were rarely any updates, either–and certainly none since it finally saw “print.”
Sigh. The glamorous life of a writer is mostly spent tracking down payments and author copies, seriously. Well, maybe not mostly, but it takes up a lot more time and energy than a non-writer might think.
I slept really well last night, with Tug making his usual five a.m. supplication, and I’ve already discovered a quirk: if I give him food, he will squeak at me until I dump out his water bowl and refill it–every single time. He won’t even start eating until he hears the water running in the sink. Granted, I always change out the water every time I feed him–but it’s part of his routine and he won’t eat until he knows he’s getting fresh water to go with the food. I think he’s completely settled into our lives as our house cat, too. He certainly believes he’s Lord of the Manor, and when he’s full grown he’s going to be a terror–because even pint-sized as he is now, he can get up to places you wouldn’t think; he’s a climber, so any possibility of a Christmas tree again is completely gone; which is fine, really. I do love Christmas, but it’s really for kids, and the older I get the more I care about the time off than holiday joy and gifts and things like that.
I made groceries on the way home last night at the Carrollton Rouse’s, which is becoming my favorite Rouse’s; the ones on the CBD and on Tchoupitoulas are convenient, but the one on Carrollton has more selection; which means going there I can get everything in one stop, whereas at either of the others I need to go to another vendor to get the rest of the things I need, which is very frustrating; and so even the extra time it takes to get up there and back is actually made up by the times savings of only going to one store. I was also very tired when I got home–we’d had a rather busy day at the office–so I didn’t read or do anything much other than put the groceries away; Paul had a board meeting so he didn’t get home until late, either. I did work on my story “The Blues Before Dawn”, and made some decent headway on it; the question is whether I want to make it another “Sherlock-in-New-Orleans” story, which I kind of want to do; I think I’ll do that for a draft and then do a second where the detective isn’t Sherlock, but I like the idea of writing a Sherlock story from someone else’s perspective, as well. I really like the idea of writing a bunch of Sherlock short stories in 1916 New Orleans, with Storyville (cliché, I know) and the Italian immigrants in the Quarter and the little Chinatown district on either side of Canal and illicit queer bars servicing sailors and so forth; how fun is that? And of course the Opera House was still there in the Quarter too–and people still spoke French in New Orleans, or at least the bastardized Louisiana version of it. I think my goal for the weekend is to finish a draft of the story and do some more work on the second Valerie novel.
And I have to go into the office tomorrow for my work-at-home day; which I may switch over to Monday; I’m not sure and I haven’t really decided yet, to be honest. I have to go in for a benefits meeting, and was thinking that maybe the thing to do would be to work in the office since I have to go there anyway; but….now I am thinking I should just go for the meeting and maybe work at home around it; I am not sure, and I suppose I will decide tomorrow morning when I get up–depending on when I get up, that is. Frankly, I am leaning towards just going in for the meeting and being done with it and coming back home. I like not having to get up on Friday mornings–even if I rarely sleep past seven as it is–but the lack of alarm going off is actually quite lovely.
And on that note, I am heading into the spice mines for the day. Have a great one, Constant Reader, and I’ll check in with you again later.
I’ve been toying with an idea for an essay for a while. It began as a blog post, but as I worked on it I realized it might be too long for a blog entry, were I to cover the entire scope of the issue even in abstract form. I moved it from here into a Word document yesterday, which may or may not mean something bigger in store for it than simply a blog entry. I don’t know. It will probably wind up here at some point as one of those long rambling things I do from time to time when I feel passionately about something. Consider that your warning. I’ve been thinking about masculinity a lot lately–it’s been an albatross hung around my neck since I was a child (“Boys don’t play with dolls! Boys don’t read Nancy Drew!”) and after reading so many bad takes about how “men are in crisis”–which basically boil down to an inability to adapt to cultural and societal change that is so intense that they resist such adaptation violently–I started thinking about masculinity and what it means to be a man; if it means anything, really. It’s probably too important an issue for me to take on in a personal essay, but personal essays are supposed to be revealing, and no one expects me to have an encyclopedic knowledge of everything ever written about American masculinity, and to discuss it; thinking I can’t write something for whatever reason is self-sabotage of the worst kind, and something I am guilty of, over and over, throughout my life and career.
And yes, self-sabotage is 100% a by-product of my anxiety.
I also have Justin Baldoni’s book about masculinity, Man Enough, which is also an exploration of masculinity. Baldoni played the incredibly hot and sexy father of Jane the Virgin’s baby, and so as a gorgeous male actor/sex symbol, he has some gravitas to speak on the subject. I’m looking forward to cycling around to his book, once I finish my reread of a Charlemagne biography I really enjoy. I also spent some more time with Shawn’s All the Sinners Bleed, which I am liking and savoring as I go–and can’t wait to spend some more time with it today. When I finish, Lou Berney’s Dark Ride has preempted everyone and been moved to the top of the TBR pile. It’s so lovely having so many great options of what to read next. I also think once October rolls around I am going to read only horror that month, in honor of the season–so I need to finish Shawn and Lou’s books before the month turns.
It also occurs to me that many of my books–unbeknownst to me–have explored the topic of masculinity in great detail already.
I slept really well last night, and only got up once. Ironically once I did wake up, I thought wow you really slept late and then saw it was quarter past seven on my alarm. I guess how it feels matters more than how long it actually was, and what truly matters is that I woke up feeling rested and relaxed and ready for my coffee this morning. I am debating right now whether I want to take the books to the library sale and the beads to the donor bins as well s make a slight grocery run–but am leaning towards not making the trip outside the house. I don’t really need anything from the store until Monday at the earliest, and the boxes of books and beads are out of the way and not bothering anyone, let alone my need for order and open space in the living room. I also want to work on some writing today before the games, so maybe leaving the house today isn’t in the cards–or am I just being lazy? It’s definitely possible that laziness and procrastination and my tendency to self-sabotage is what is really going on here. It’s possible. I do tend to put things off I consider unpleasant (and by unpleasant, I mean have to put some effort into it)…
LSU plays Arkansas tonight in Death Valley, and tonight we’ll find out two things: basically, how good either time is. It’s hard to say this early in the season how much quality your wins and losses have; the Florida State-Clemson game today will impact how good the LSU loss to the Seminoles was, and of course we aren’t sure how good Mississippi State is, so we don’t know if that was a quality win yet or not. Arkansas lost to BYU last weekend, so there’s also no telling how good they may or may not be, either. The whole conference seems to be down this year, but a tight win for Georgia can be shaken off as meaningless this early, and Alabama may bounce back; a Nick Saban coached Alabama team has never lost more than three games in a season since 2010 and only twice overall; sure, they looked unimpressive against USF and lost badly to Texas in Tuscaloosa, but does that mean Alabama isn’t going to rebound and is destined for a bad season? No, I don’t think so. Love them or hate them, Alabama consistently wins, and an early season loss means nothing to their program. Sure, LSU could run the table, win the West and potentially even the conference title game and make it to the play-offs; but they have to run the table on a schedule filled with landmines, including both Alabama and a rebuilding Auburn as well as the always hated Florida Gators. There are some great games today, which is why I want to spend some time reading Shawn’s book this morning before the games start, and I plan on rereading and revising Jackson Square Jazz during the games today.
And of course, there’s always filing and organizing to be done. I have seriously messed up my filing system so thoroughly and completely that it’s going to require a major overhaul to begin with, but I also have to think about putting together a new and workable system that will be easier to maintain than this haphazard way I’ve been doing things–and of course the computer files are an utter disaster as well. Heavy sigh.
I’ve been doing a lot more research (or rather, falling into research black holes on the web) about New Orleans during the decade of the 1910’s. I am definitely going to write a Sherlock pastiche for the Bouchercon anthology–which of course means I will most likely be rejected. Perhaps a Sherlockian-type character, and if they turn it down I can simply turn him into Sherlock and toss the story into my short story collection? I need to finish the revisions of “Whim of the Wind” and finish a draft of “Parlor Tricks,” which will probably go into that collection as well. What particularly interests me now is “Manila Village,” a settlement of Filipinos on Barataria Bay, settled by native Filipinos who were forced to serve in the Spanish navy and escaped to Louisiana. There’s still a strong Filipino-American community here (which I actually didn’t know before falling into this wormhole of research), and I do feel that Holmes, living in New Orleans in that decade, would probably embrace them and their culture. (I also need to research the Isleños; descendants of the Canary Islanders who settled here.) New Orleans was also dramatically different geographically back then; the New Basin Canal was still there, for one thing, and I am not entirely sure when the Carondelet Canal (also called the Old Basin Canal) was filled in, but it came right up next to Congo Square; the streets in the Quarter were either dirt or cobblestone, and the lower part of the neighborhood had been almost entirely taken over by Italian immigrants.
I’ve also got strong starts of first chapters for another Jem book (sequel to Death Drop) and another Valerie (sequel to A Streetcar Named Murder); so there’s plenty of writing to be done this weekend as well. I’m not feeling overwhelmed by any or all of this writing that must be worked on and done; this morning I literally feel like all I need to do is roll up my sleeves and dive into the word documents head first, which is a great way to feel.
And on that note, it’s spice mine time this morning. Have a great Saturday and I’ll probably check in with you again later.
Sunday morning and we’ve survived yet another day of a heat advisory, which was miserable when I went out to get the mail and some cleaning supplies (I also got grocery store sushi for lunch, don’t you dare judge me). But I wasn’t out in it all the much, and I managed. I slept decently Friday night, woke up a few times, like always, but went to bed and slept in until seven thirty (!) before getting up and getting started on the day. I started doing a thorough cleaning of the laundry room and the kitchen in the morning (I needed more wet Swiffer pads, which was why I had to stop before running errands, and I needed other cleaning supplies as well, too), and rearranged the top of the dresser upstairs so there was room for more books, so I took my copies of the annotated Holmes up there along with some other enormous research books that don’t fit in my bookcases and had taken up residence on top of the microwave–which I then cleaned and moved the cookbooks to (because that’s where they belong, goddamnit), which pleased me inordinately. I miss Paul, of course, but the plan to keep myself busy so as to not get lonely seems to be working out so far.
Yesterday, I cleaned.
I even moved furniture and rearranged my workspace. I also discovered that I’d bought one of those Apple speaker things I can stream Spotify through, so I can have music playing while I do things–so no risk of being detoured by television or going down Youtube wormholes. I did baseboards, Constant Reader. I really need to get some Venetian blinds for this window over my desk, much as I loathe giving in finally to the loss of the crepe myrtles. The LSU blanket I tacked up in a rather pointless display of spite and vengeance that had absolutely no effect on anything other than to further enhance the “college apartment” essence we’ve apparently been going for these last few years needs to come down. I’m a grown-up, after all, and the days of using blankets for shades should have been gone years ago.
Talk about arrested development! And as usual, the only person affected by my spite is me, as always.
But it felt good to clean everything, to pick up the rugs and beat them outside, to actually sweep the floors beneath and then wash them before putting back the rugs; moving furniture to anchor the ones more prone to moving, wiping every surface down and even getting some work done in the living room, too, which was marvelous. I also discovered that I had already written a draft of the fifth chapter–I didn’t remember getting past Chapter Four (although I thought I’d already figured it out just not written it–pleasant surprise!). Also, after putting the new drafts of chapters three of four in the three ring binder for the book (because I do this for every book), I found a note scribbled on the last page of Chapter Four–something I had noticed when I was revising it, but didn’t think was a big deal–and now I need to go back and fix it. It’s minor, not a big deal, but if I don’t catch it and fix it now…I may not and whoops! Today I am going to work on the living room some and try to get some writing done. I want to revise Chapter Five, maybe finish this next draft of a short story, and maybe finish writing the first draft of another. I also need to sit down and plot out another one.
I may clean the ceiling fans. Madness. I also need to get lightbulbs, or find the ones we already have.
I also stretched yesterday and used the the back massage roller thingee, which felt great–as did the stretching. I need to stretch more regularly; seriously. It only takes about five minutes, feels great, and always gives me a jolt of energy whenever I do it. And it’s good for me and a healthy thing to do, so why do I never think about doing it? Or why do I think about it and then just shrug it off? Perhaps someday I will understand, but it’s doubtful at this point.
I slept really well again last night, waking up relatively early this morning, which is good as I plan on having a productive day. This morning I plan to do some more cleaning, read some more, and then write all afternoon if possible. My coffee is definitely hitting the spot this morning and tasting marvelous, and here’s hoping this motivation carries through the day, shall we?
I did finish watching The History of Sitcoms last night, which I did enjoy somewhat, I could probably write an entire entry dissecting the episode about class, and the success CBS had in the 1960’s essentially stereotyping the South and Southern people with shows like The Beverly Hillbillies, Green Acres, and Petticoat Junction, among others. But the first two shows (I watched Petticoat Junction growing up, but don’t remember anything about it; the other two I remember very clearly) were actually a lot more clever that critics of the time thought–they were dismissed as very lowbrow humor, but they said a lot about class and were also kind of stinging indictments of American capitalism, mythology, and the class strictures we faced as a nation. (It was interesting that these shows about rural Southern people never address race; Granny on The Beverly Hillbillies still believed the Civil War was still on-going–she was in denial about the loss, I guess; which is certainly problematic when seen through a more evolved and modern perspective.)
I plan on finishing the downstairs today–which means the ceiling fans, or at least trying to get them cleaned; I can only reach so far with my ladder (I should have bought a six foot instead of a five foot all those years ago) but I think I can reach the blades of the fans…or at least I can change out the lightbulbs that are blown out. Then I can spend the rest of this week keeping the downstairs under control as I start working on the upstairs.
I also read two more chilling Alfred Hitchcock Presents tales, this time from Stories That Scared Even Me, “Men Without Bones” by Gerald Kersh and “Not With a Bang” by Damon Knight. I enjoyed both stories, despite having no clue about either author (these old anthologies do not include author biographies in the back, which is a rather disappointing oversight). Kersh apparently wrote the book Night and the City and lots of short stories; Harlan Ellison considered him one of his favorite writers, and “Men Without Bones” was certainly a chilling story, about a man who boards a banana boat hoping desperately for passage back to the United States, who then tells of a chilling voyage deep into the jungle to look for proof of alien visitation years ago when mankind was still in its infancy (which was a very popular trope when I was a kid; Erich von Däniken’s work was selling hundreds of thousands of copies in multiple languages); there is a very dark twist at the end of the already dark story that was rather jolting. Damon Knight was a very popular science fiction writer of the post-war period; I’ve not heard of any of his novels (he was named a Grand Master by SFWA, which he helped found; he was also very prolific as a short story writer, and he wrote the story “To Serve Man,” which became one of the more famous episodes of the original Twilight Zone. One of the things I am enjoying most about reading these old anthologies is learning about great writers of the past who may not be as well-known today as they were in their time; it sometimes makes me wonder if forty years from now some gay mystery writer could be reading old anthologies from this time and discover me? “Not With a Bang” is a post-apocalyptic story about the last two humans left alive–a man and a woman–but the woman’s experiences and what she witnessed as the world came to an end has kind of fried her brain; she cannot really process what happened and it sent her back to a rather prim-like mental state from earlier in her life; she refuses to have sex with the only man left alive unless they are married–but they cannot be married as there’s no one left alive to perform the ceremony. It’s never very clear if the man is so anxious to fuck her because he wants to repopulate the world or if its sexual anxiety and frustration; but he’s not a very good person and he also has caught the post-nuclear plague that wiped out everything the bombs and the fallout didn’t get; one of the symptoms is essentially losing the ability to move or speak and falling into a coma-like state that can be reversed with medication he has stockpiled…but once she has agreed to marry him and we realize that he’s not just frustrated with her–he’s not a good person and he plans to abuse her and be dreadful to her…and chillingly thinks and she could have a daughter…before he goes into a bathroom and freezes into the coma…with the door shut behind him and he’s lost the ability to speak.
These old macabre tales with their eerie twists at the end are probably–I am seeing now–the biggest influences I ever had with my short story writing. I still try to end my stories with a surprising twist, and that has everything to do with reading these anthologies when I was a teenager, watching Night Gallery and reruns of The Twilight Zone (as well as the reboot in the 1980s, which aired one of my favorite episodes of television of all time; a teleplay based on Harlan Ellison’s brilliant story–one of my favorites of all time–“Paladin of the Lost Hour”); these were the same influences Stephen King counts. I also read the horror/suspense comics a lot as a kid, House of Secrets, House of Mystery, Tales from the Crypt and The Witching Hour, among others; there were also little digests for Ripley’s Believe It or Not and other macabre comic tales. Apparently, you’re never too old to remember influences or learn more about yourself.
And on that note, I am going to go spend some more time with Kelly J. Ford’s marvelous The Hunt, and I will check in with you again later, Constant Reader. Have a lovely Sunday!
Queer and Loathing in America 