Monday morning and I am not really awake yet. My legs still feel stiff and fatigued, and my brain is a bit cloudy, but I am back to the office today and thus need to wake myself up before it’s time to get in the car and go, you know? My coffee tastes great and it’s going down easily. Today is also the day the nurse comes by to teach me how to give myself an injection, and use the device I have to attach to myself for five minutes while it pumps the medication into me. Exciting times, am I right? I also am going to have to get up and go have blood drawn on Friday again, too. How many times have I had to have my skin pierced this year? Quite a fucking few. But at least I’ll have something to talk about tomorrow morning, won’t I? Heavy heaving sigh.
Monday mornings are always a struggle, you know, but this one is worse than my usual Monday. I am still fatigued–the legs are aching–and my mind is clearing, but there’s still some vestiges of Morpheus lagging inside my head. It’s going to be a struggle today, methinks, and I have to make some groceries on the way home, too. Sigh. I don’t think I’ll have any trouble sleeping this evening, and will probably be snoring in my chair by nine.
We did catch up on some of our shows last night after the US Open and the truly sad Saints game, watching another episode of Foundation, one of Peacemaker, and started the second half of Wednesday before calling it an evening so I could get ready for work and go to bed at an earlier time than I would have preferred. I also read more deeply into the manuscript, and I also need to start doing the tarot reading that tells the story in chapter headings.
I also had a lovely exchange on social media yesterday about some of the Broadway legends who’ve come to the Tennessee Williams Festival. I always forget that being Mrs. Festival has always enabled me to meet acting legends like Marian Seldes, Frances Sternhagen, and Zoe Caldwell, who were all absolutely lovely and fun to be around. I had a lovely conversation at dinner with Frances that I will always cherish as a memory, and of course, Marian was incredibly kind and generous, and Zoe was an absolute hoot. Sometime I’ll need to sit down and go through the old programs and remind myself of all the famous people I’ve met. (John Waters remains my favorite.)
I also became aware of an interesting story regarding the LSU Marching Band…a retired gentleman named Kent Broussard has joined the band! He’s sixty-six years old, and he had a dream that he wanted to play tuba in the marching band for LSU. So he bought a tuba a few years ago, took lessons, and enrolled in classes so he could audition for the band. He made it! Saturday was his first performance at a home game. Isn’t that cool?
I love being reminded that you’re never too old to pursue your dreams, don’t you?
And on that note, I am heading into the spice mines. Have a lovely Monday, and I’ll be back with a full report on the injection tomorrow!
Here we are on a Thursday morning. Everyone is arriving in Denver for Left Coast Crime, but I don’t have any FOMO. Sure, there are people I would love to see and spend time with, and I always have fun at conferences, but…there are also other people there. I thought I would really miss not going to Bouchercon in Nashville last year, but…I didn’t. I’ve always been a FOMO person, scared that I was missing out on a good time, but I didn’t the entire time it was going on, or even after. And the local ones are next weekend, anyway.
I just saw that we are in the path of some massive storm system this weekend that’s going to throw up potential tornadoes in New Orleans, which means we may lose power, which will be incredibly annoying if it happens, but also means I can just light some candles and read in my easy chair. I do want to make some more reading progress this weekend in addition to everything else on the to-do list. We just can’t seem to catch a break down here this year, can we? Terrorism, blizzards, high winds, the Super Bowl, Carnival…sheesh. It’s like we can’t ever just breathe…and we are heading into stinging caterpillar season, with swarming termites not far behind.
We were busy at work yesterday again, with the end result that I was, as I suspected, exhausted when I got home from my post-work errands last night. I collapsed into my easy chair with a purring kitty and was down for the rest of the night. I caught up on my reality show, caught up on the latest news of the great American collapse (or whatever future historians will call the end of the Great American Experiment in Self-Rule), and then went to bed at a fairly early hour. I did run the dishwasher, as planned, but not the washing machine as planned. I am a bit fatigued today–synapses aren’t quite firing the way they should be–so I may not be able to write or read when I get home tonight. I guess we shall see. We’re also busy today, too. Sigh. It’s been a week at the office, has it not? But at least I only need to log four hours of remote work and then the day is mine.
Woo-hoo!
I was, naturally, saddened by the loss of a long-time friend this week, Felice Picano. It’s very strange to think I won’t ever see him again, or get that mischievous kid look on his face when he was about to say something absolutely terrible about someone to me. Felice was the first published writer I ever met. I went to a signing he did for the paperback release of Like People in History at the Borders in Minneapolis that used to be on the corner of Lake and Hennepin. Paul had bought me a hardcover copy as a gift the year before, and I’d loved the book. I was too shy and awestruck to do anything but put my book down for a signature…but when Paul went to work for the Tennessee Williams Literary Festival, they wanted to put together a queer panel and I suggested Felice for it, and I got to pick him up at the airport. That ride in from the airport was my first actual conversation with him, and the start of a friendship that lasted almost thirty years. We always tried to have coffee or lunch or something when he was in town for Saints & Sinners after that, I stayed in his house in the Hollywood Hills several times, and there was one amazing weekend when he gave me a lift to Palm Springs from LA, and oh, how hard we laughed in the car on the way there. I didn’t see or interact with him as much as I used to, but every time I saw him, it was like we’d just seen each other the day before. He meant a lot to me, and the fact that he always treated me as a peer from that first meeting at the airport on meant the world to me.
I just can’t believe I’ll never see him again. The worst thing about getting older is losing people.
And on that somber note, I am heading into the spice mines. Have a lovely Friday Eve, everyone, and I’ll be back eventually.
Ballerinos have the most amazing bodies–and even more amazing is what they can DO with those bodies.
The last few days…let’s just start with saying that there is a lot of garbage on social media. The Katrina anniversary is always a bit hard for me, but has gotten easier over the years. I’ve even gotten to the point where I don’t even think about it until the anniversary posts and photos of the disaster start showing up on my social media feeds. I am also writing a book set during hurricane season and opens during a tropical storm/Category 1. So seeing people troll people’s posts about it is, frankly, disgusting. There was one particular bitch from Bryan, Texas, who took it upon herself to reply to everyone’s comments on a particular thread posted by one of our local television stations, memorializing those who died. Almost all the response comments on said post were from people who lived through it, commiserating and remembering their experiences and how terrible it was. This bitch responded to every one mockingly, saying things like if that was the worst thing I went through I’d consider myself lucky or Tell me why you’re not still over this minor interruption and so on. She had MAGA written all over her profile and personal feed, of course, because the cruelty is what they love about their movement.
And of course, another Southern white woman writer (not in the mystery community, but part of Louisiana’s) who has always been lovely to me1 in the past posted one of those “don’t lose friends over two politicians who don’t even know your names!” which always pisses me off, because the only people who ever say that don’t want to be judged for being horrible human beings. That is a red flag for me, always–no one who ever truly cared about anyone other than white people would never tell marginalized people to overlook the fact that people think we are subhuman.2 I basically said something similar on her post, basically “tell me you’re okay with racism and homophobia and misogyny” and unfriended her. Then one of her “friends” responded to me with some seriously despicable homophobia. Horrible stuff, on her wall…and she responded to other people after the homophobe came for me, but didn’t say anything to the homophobe, which…she’s perfectly okay with homophobic attacks and language from people she knows…which makes her human fecal sewage.
It shouldn’t bother me at sixty-three, but I don’t need to know anyone who is okay with homophobia. So, local Louisiana author, let me say this to you: you’re a disgusting piece of shit, a Klanwife who is perfectly okay with bigotry and hatred while pretending to not be one of those people, and I should have known you were a homophobe because of the hideously ugly wigs, the trailer trash eyebrows, and the Ross Dress for Less fashions you buy in sizes too small. And I’ve noticed you always slightly smell of urine.
I did post something on Facebook–not that I was angry about it, but I was more disappointed than anything else, not only in her but in myself, and of course I got a lot of sympathy and friends who want to ride at dawn, which is lovely but completely unnecessary because, my friends, most of you have never even heard of this woman. In fact, I met her through people who are my friends, or at least nice to me. I doubt I will ever see her again (see footnote about TWFest), but I will stick to my usual “I don’t even acknowledge trash humans” if we ever are in the same place. And I’m not hurt or upset or anything about it. It’s not the first or last time a Southern white woman I’ve known has turned out to be a Klanwife.3 They’re just better than their men at hiding it in polite company.
It rained all day yesterday and we were in a flood alert, which was lovely. I didn’t leave the house other than taking out the garbage. I spent the day doing my work-at-home duties and some chores. This morning I have an appointment to get my COVID booster and need to pick up a few things here and there around town before coming home for a day of football. Huzzah! I did write some yesterday, but not much, but any progress is progress, and I also started thinking about how to make the book better and more of a challenge to write for me, which is very cool.
And on that note, I am going to get cleaned up to get my day rolling. Have a lovely Saturday, Constant Reader, and will most likely not be here again today, most likely. You know how much I love college football! GEAUX TIGERS TOMORROW!
Surprisingly enough, I’ve gotten to the point where I forget writers are nice to me because they want to be a part of the TWFest and for no other reason. Guess who will never be on a panel now? ↩︎
And that’s the language I’m using from now on–because that’s the core of white supremacy; everyone who isn’t white or Christian is subhuman. Tell me you’d happily enslave people without saying the words. ↩︎
There’s also this whole thing where people to excuse conservative women for their horrendous beliefs (similar to sympathies for Melania Trump or Usha Vance, but I will tell you this, from years of experience: conservative women are not controlled by their husbands, and are often much worse than their husbands–which was the real lesson to be taken from Gone with the Wind, frankly. Melanie and Mrs. Merriwether and Mrs. Meade and Mrs. Elsing and all those women would be MAGA today. ↩︎
Every once in a while, I need to remind myself of how much I love my home town.
I was thinking about this the other day. I think part of the malaise I’ve been experiencing lately has everything to do with my creative muscles being tight and unexercised for so long–and almost every time I manage to write fiction, it’s so exhausting and draining that I can’t write more, either. Monday got derailed early, and that night we had another torrential, street-flooding thunderstorm…and the kitchen roof started leaking again. I mean, it only does this during that kind of rain; but we have many downpours like that over the course of a year. That kind of kicked the malaise back up into higher gear–I just am so tired of having to deal with things like this over and over when all I really want to do is just go about my day, moving from A to B and getting things done and being productive. It all becomes so much, you know? The rise of queer hate to levels not seen since the 2004 election (may you roast forever on a spit in hell, Karl Rove), and it’s very tiring. It’s also tiring to think that I may be living in the last days of the American experiment with democracy, too–and the fact that far too many of my fellow Americans are just fine with that is kind of upsetting.
Such good Germans.
But I do love New Orleans, even if I have to remind myself of that from time to time. I do; there’s just something about this city that is in my blood, my DNA, and my being; I cannot imagine being happy anywhere else. I could exist somewhere else, of course, but I really don’t want to really just exist anymore. My blog is getting feisty again because I am feeling feisty again and pissed off about a lot of things. I’ve also been immersing myself in gay and queer culture again lately–Capote and Isherwood, anyone?–and remembering how hard life used to be for people like me (see Fellow Travelers and It’s a Sin), it invigorates my senses and intellect against injustice and unfairness as it always does. Recounting stories of my past recently as well as all the introspection I’ve been doing since losing Mom last year (and really, I started thinking about it more during the pandemic, and a lot of it was because of It’s a Sin) has me remembering things, how they used to be, and what New Orleans is like now as opposed to how it was when I first moved here all those years ago, or all the times I came to visit when I worked for Continental. The city is different now than it was then–sleepily crumbling away in the hot sun and heavy wet air–and I’ve been a bit resistant to those changes. I don’t like that it’s insanely expensive to pay rent or buy a home here now–one of the strengths of the city was how many working class people owned homes here, and that seems to be going away as the city continues gentrifying itself.
Monday I also gave a co-worker a ride home from the office, and since it was a torrential rain, I drove her into the Quarter and let her out at her door on St. Ann Street close to the corner at Dauphine. I honestly can’t remember the last time I drove through the Quarter, and I really don’t go down there much anymore other than for the TWFest/S&S. I took Dauphine out of the Quarter, and a lot has changed since the 1990’s, or even the last time I drove through. I think during the festivals this year I am going to explore the Quarter a bit more than I have the last few years, and hopefully drink in some more atmosphere. I’ve kind of felt a little phony writing the Scotty books lately, since I am rarely if ever down there now since my office moved, and have been telling myself I need to explore and take pictures again.
I was thinking Tuesday night when I got home from work that I was becoming as bad as all those locals who look back nostalgically for the past and the way things used to be. I also know I am glossing over what the mid to late 1990’s were really like here, as well as for us. New Orleans has changed and has never remained the same throughout its history, but the foundation of the city remains the same. I want to write about that time in New Orleans (“Never Kiss a Stranger”), so that’s it preserved forever, those days when the sodomy laws hadn’t been overturned yet, and when the gay bars always got raided in the weeks leading up to Decadence so that we knew they were “letting” us have Decadence; the people we thought were insane in state politics in 1996 are now running things and trying their damnedest to turn Louisiana back to 1860 and shoving their religion down everyone’s throats. My primary issue with still writing about the city has nothing to do with how much I love the city, or how I feel about things around here, but mainly because I don’t know what it’s like to go out on the weekends to the bars in the Quarter, or what it’s like for gay men in their forties here now.
So yes, I am looking forward to writing the next Scotty–and revisiting the Chanse series, as I’ve been doing, has me actually considering doing another Chanse story. I have two ideas for him, actually, but am not sure either is going to amount to anything.
(NOTE: I started writing this post back in January, after I’d returned to New Orleans from my last Mystery Writers of America board meeting–this is to give context to the opening paragraph– as you are no doubt well aware, Constant Reader, that I’ve not been back to New York since January; so this is that same trip where this happened and I started thinking about these things, which have never been far out of the forefront of my mind since then.)
While I was in New York recently, walking around to and fro, here and there, hither and yon, I was always checking my phone (and yes, I hate that I’ve become one of those people) and then shoving it back into my pants pocket without putting it to sleep first or closing the app that was open. As I walked around, of course this led to my phone doing all kinds of weird things –closing an app and opening another, etc.; but at least there were no butt dials, right? At one point, when I pulled out my phone as I took a seat on the subway, somehow what was open on the screen was a google search for my book A Streetcar Named Murder–and when I went to close that screen I touched one of the images by mistake, which took me to the Goodreads page for the book. Bear in mind, I never look at Goodreads for any of my books, let alone Amazon–the temptations to start reading the bad reviews is too great, and while I can usually laugh them off, occasionally–and it depends entirely on my mood, of course–one will get under my skin and it will annoy me, and that’s not good for anyone.
This particular day on the subway the Goodreads page opened to the bad reviews first–its average is four stars, which I will always take because I am not Lauren Hough–and the very first one made me laugh out loud on the subway. Paraphrased, it was basically someone taking umbrage at “someone who doesn’t live here or know the first thing about New Orleans” writing a book about New Orleans. The reason they had come to this conclusion was because Valerie referred to Mardi Gras as “Fat Tuesday”, and according to this one-star reviewer, no one from New Orleans would ever say Fat Tuesday instead of Mardi Gras.
Well, I’ve lived here for twenty-seven years and I have heard any number of locals say Fat Tuesday rather than Mardi Gras, and so of course I had to click on the reviewer’s profile…and grinned to myself when I saw that they actually live in Metairie, not New Orleans…which to locals is a bigger crime than getting something wrong about New Orleans: claiming to be from New Orleans when you actually live in Metairie. (the rejoinder is usually along the lines of “bitch, you live in Metairie.”)
It was also kind of fun to be accused of inauthenticity when it comes to writing about New Orleans, because I personally have never claimed to be an expert on anything New Orleans (others have said that about me, and I always am very quick to reply not even close); the more I learn about the city the more I realize how little I actually know about the city. There’s an extremely rich (and often incredibly dark) history here; it’s hard for me to wrap my mind around the fact that the New Basin canal was there as long as it was, or that there were several train stations around the French Quarter (including one that essentially was in Storyville–rather convenient for the whores and pimps, right?), or that where UNO is now used to be the lake shore resort of Milneburg, or that the only way across the river or the lake was by ferry until Huey Long built a bridge at the Rigolets (the narrow inlet between lakes Pontchartrain and Borgne).
I was on a panel once at the Tennessee Williams Festival with Bill Loefhelm (if you’re not reading Bill’s books, shame on you and correct that immediately) and the question of New Orleans authenticity came up, and Bill’s response (paraphrasing) was that New Orleanians have a tendency to play a game called “NOLier than Thou,” in which they try to one-up each other to see who the true New Orleanian actually is–which is, of course, gatekeeping. (And yes, I immediately turned to him and said, “I like that and am going to steal it” SO CONSIDER IT STOLEN.)
It does bother me somewhat when I read books set in New Orleans written by people who have never lived here; you can tell, but I also get over it pretty quickly; who is to say who can and can’t write about a place? There’s a significant difference between visiting and living here, which I realized almost immediately after we moved here, and that also becomes very apparent in fiction. I had started writing the book that would become Murder in the Rue Dauphine before I moved here, and I realized, once I did live here, that everything I’d written about New Orleans was completely wrong. I didn’t work on the book for another two years; and even then I wasn’t entirely sure I’d lived here long enough to write about the city. So…I kind of cheated by making Chanse MacLeod not a native either; he’d moved to New Orleans after getting his degree in Criminology from LSU, and had been here about six or seven years when the story opened. So he was an outsider, too; so his views on the city and how things work around here were from an outsider’s perspective, like mine; that was easier. With Bourbon Street Blues, I decided that Scotty was not only a native but came from two old-line society families, from the Garden District and Uptown. One of the greatest joys of my publishing career was having the Times-Picayune’s mystery reviewer, as well as the Books Editor, both say repeatedly that I got New Orleans right in my books. (Thanks again as always for all of your support, Diana Pinckley and Susan Larson!)
And I never really worried about it too much from then on. I wrote about New Orleans as I saw it–the potholes, the cracked sidewalks, the leaning houses, flooding streets, oppressive weather and hurricanes. As the years passed, I became more and more aware that my New Orleans writing was primarily confined to the Quarter, the Marigny, the CBD, the Lower Garden District, the Garden District, and Uptown–a very narrow slice of the city, but those were also my slices of the city, so that’s I wrote about. Sometimes I’d venture into another neighborhood–Lakeview, the Irish Channel, English Turn–and sometimes the story would take the characters to another part of Louisiana–the bayou and river parishes, the Maurepas swamp, the Atchafalaya Swamp, Baton Rouge–which, oddly enough, I had no qualms about fictionalizing. I’ve created numerous fictional towns and parishes surrounding New Orleans; I’ve even invented a sleazy gay bar in the Quarter (the Brass Rail).
So, was I doing New Orleans (and Louisiana) right by making stuff up, inventing places like the Royal Aquitaine Hotel, the Brass Rail, Bodytech Health Club, Riverview Fitness, etc.? Sometimes you have to fictionalize things, even if they are based on something that really exists. I never really thought much about it; I felt like I was getting the feel of New Orleans right, that my characters talked the way people in New Orleans do and react the way people here do, and that I was putting enough reality into the books for them to ring true to locals, natives, and tourists. Sometimes the cases are based on, in or around something that actually happened or exist; like the Cabildo Fire, the Fire at the Upstairs Lounge, Hurricane Katrina and the ensuing flood; termite swarms; Huey Long’s deduct box; and even the court case in, I think, Murder in the Irish Channel that triggered the murders was actually based on a civil trial I served as a juror on.
When I started writing A Streetcar Named Murder, I realized a lot of things I was writing about had to be fictionalized; I couldn’t set a murder at a Mardi Gras krewe ball and use an actual krewe that exists in real life, for one thing (like I had to invent a French Quarter hotel for a couple of murders to occur in) and while I didn’t want to use the cheat that Valerie had moved here again, like I did with Chanse, I wanted her to be of New Orleans but not be of New Orleans…so her parents are from Georgia and moved here after college and marriage, so Valerie was born here, went to school here, met and fell in love with and married her husband here–but her roots aren’t very deep, so she is both insider and outsider at the same time. I liked that idea; like how I am of the South but not of the South, she was of New Orleans but not of New Orleans at the same time. When creating Jem Richard in Death Drop, again, he’s a recent transplant to the city but his father is from New Orleans but relocated to Dallas, where Jem was born and raised. Jem spent a lot of his summers in New Orleans when he was growing up with his paternal grandmother, so he too is of New Orleans but not of New Orleans; which I am really liking as a method of storytelling about the city. I also moved Jem to a different part of the city; he lives in the 7th ward, on St. Roch Avenue in what is known as the St. Roch neighborhood (aka what realtors are trying to redefine and rename as the “new Marigny”, in order to raise prices) which is also very close to my office. Part of this was to move the action out of the neighborhoods I usually write about (although he does wind up in both Uptown and the Quarter) and so I could explore another neighborhood/part of the city than what I usually write about.
I also had recently–prior to the pandemic–started feeling more disconnected from the city than I ever had before. Primarily I think this was due to my office moving; we had been on Frenchmen Street in the Marigny, one block from the Quarter and where Scotty lives, so whenever I needed some Scotty inspiration I could walk a block, stand under the balconies of his building and just look around, drinking in the sights and sounds and smells of the block. To get past this, I started joining New Orleans history pages on Facebook, like Ain’t Dere No Mo New Orleans or the HNOC page and various others–you do occasionally run into Confederate apologists and racists there (they usually cry about the “crime” in New Orleans–you know, the usual dog-whistles from the white flight racists who fled to Jefferson Parish or the North Shore to escape desegregation of the public schools) and reading more histories of the city, state, and region–which are incredibly fascinating. That reading/research helped me write my historical Sherlock in New Orleans short story, “The Affair of the Purloined Rentboy”–but I have also since realized I got some things wrong in the story too, but there is just so much to know. I set the story in 1916 for example….without knowing New Orleans was hit by a MAJOR hurricane in 1915 that wiped out any number of settlements and villages around the lakes and the bay shores (that will turn up in a story sometime; the destruction of the lake front village of Freniere is just begging to be fictionalized and written about). When I mentioned this to another writer, who primarily does historicals, she snorted. “It’s impossible to know everything, and would people in 1916 still be talking about a hurricane from 1915?”
Probably, but if it doesn’t have anything to do with the story being told, why would I mention it?
A very valuable lesson, to be sure.
So, yes, lady from Metairie: you caught me. I’m not from New Orleans, you’re correct. But I’ve also published over twenty novels and umpteen short stories set here, and have even won awards for doing it.
And I’ll call it Fat Tuesday if I fucking want to.
The Huey P. Long Bridge at sunset, photo credit Marco Rasi
Saturday morning and another lovely day in New Orleans–if a bit chilly–has dawned in the Lost Apartment. What a marvelous night’s sleep I had last night. The bed and blankets were so comfortable–not to mention the snoring kitty curled up between Paul and I–that I really didn’t want to get up, but I have far too much to do today to continue to laze in the bed simply because it felt good. So, it was out of the bed for one Gregalicious, and here I sit, swilling my morning coffee and clearing the cobwebs from my brain by trying to write a coherent blog post. (Good luck to me on that, am I right?) Yesterday was a work-at-home day, of data entry and doing quality assurance on testing logs, and yes, it is as tedious as it sounds. But after work I did some great thinking and work on the in-progress story, and am looking forward to getting some quality work done on it this morning/afternoon/however long it takes me to reach the day’s goal, and no matter if it kills me–which it just might do. I also have some errands to do today, but they shouldn’t take long.
Huzzah? Huzzah.
Last night we watched the final episode of Welcome to Chippendale’s, which really dragged on for far too long. There really wasn’t eight episodes of story here, and so it often seemed to drag and drag and drag. It’s a shame, the acting was top-notch and it was a great story, but unless you’re interested in viewing a couple of Emmy-worthy performances, watch the true crime documentary instead. It’s funny to remember how ubiquitous Chippendale’s seemed to be in the 1980’s–I certainly owned a few of their calendars, since they were the first real beefcake calendars produced–and I wished sometimes that I had a stronger memory, at least of the 1980’s, but it was such a dark and brutal decade for me I think I was happy to forget most of it. Paul is going to be gone most of the day today, so I have no excuse not to get a lot of writing and other things completed today. I do want to watch the adaptation of Louis Bayard’s The Pale Blue Eye on Netflix at some point this weekend, and of course we do need to finish watching Sherwood, too. I leave for New York on Wednesday, which is kind of fun–I am really looking forward to having some good Chinese food–and hopefully I’ll be able to get writing done on the road (which never happens, no matter how much I hope that it does).
But this time, it must.
I’m really enjoying all this writing I am doing lately, even though I am lazy and would rather not do anything at all. But it feels good to be pushing my brain and my creativity and trying to come up with fresh and new ways of saying things as well as fresh and new characters and interactions and stories. This first half of the year is going to be hectic and busy for me, but I am developing a plan that should help me get through till the spring. If I can stay motivated and stop being lazy, I should be able to get a lot accomplished before the dog days of summer are upon me. My writing goals for the year are very ambitious, of which I am well aware, but I think it’s better to try to do more and not quite get there than to plan less ambitiously and get even less done. I know I can’t get everything done that I want to get done in 2023 (I don’t think anyone could, to be honest), but I’d rather be overconfident than not, you know?
I am having my first piece of king cake for 2023 with my coffee this morning and it is sublime. It’s kind of hard to believe that Carnival season has rolled around again, and now of course the first part of the year will fly by: New York next week, Alabama the first weekend of February, then Carnival, the one-two punch of Tennessee Williams Festival/Saints and Sinners at the end of March, and then of course it’s practically summer again already, and then the next thing you know it’s football season again. This, for the record, is how your life ends up slipping through your fingers like mercury. Heavy sigh. But I am trying not to look forward to things, if that makes sense? I kind of want to just keep my head down, avoid drama for the most part, and focus on my writing for the year. It seems like writing always takes a back seat to everything else for me, which is ironic since it’s the thing I draw the most pleasure from and being a writer is such an integral part of my self-identity. I don’t see myself as a sexual health counselor, even though that’s my day job and has been for eighteen years. I don’t see myself as Mrs. Saints & Sinners/Tennessee Williams Festival, either–even though that’s been Paul’s job for the last twenty-two years. I see myself, despite all the other identities I take on in my everyday life, first and foremost as a writer; that is the core of my identity and who I am. And yet…it always seems as though my writing in always being shunted to the side or pushed back on the list of things to do because I have so many other things always going on in my life. Writing will be my priority now going forward, and while I still intend to work on volunteer stuff whenever I have time, that isn’t going to be a priority for me and it never should have been, either. I don’t know why the most important aspect of my life is always back-burnered for one reason or another, but it’s not going to be the case anymore. I am going to be even more zealous and jealous of my time and donating it only sparingly, and only when I have time.
I also need to start being realistic about everything I can and cannot do and stop thinking oh I can do everything in the world by all means ask me to do more things. I think it all comes from the fear of being disliked, that goes back to childhood–I don’t think I’ve ever gotten over those scars, truth be told–and I am very aware of the idiocy this implies: oh if I say no to this they won’t like me and won’t ask me again; I have always called this Homecoming Queen Syndrome–the desperate need for approval from other people, the need to be liked and well thought of, the fear of being made fun of, mocked, and disliked. I need to work harder on not giving a fuck, but it’s also part and parcel of being queer and trying to fit into a mainstream culture group, the crime writing community. It’s very strange and off-putting to know that people who’ve never met you, know nothing about you, and never will know you hate you in the abstract; that some people will never like you because they’re homophobic (honestly, when it comes to homophobia I prefer the Westboro Baptist Church version, where they will scream their hatred in your face; at least it’s more honest than people who will smile to your face while voting to strip you of your rights); and those same people will never, no matter what, ever read anything you write. It’s weird knowing that people will find your books on Amazon and one-star you without reading the actual book because you’re a queer and you had the audacity to write a book about queers where they are actually whole, happy people who aren’t suffering at all because of their same-sex attractions. The great irony of this is my own inconsistency; when I actually think about it, I do not give two shits what other people think of me, and haven’t for a long time. Unfortunately, I’ve been conditioned my entire life to care what other people think so I always fall back on that subconsciously; I’m always so flattered to be asked to do anything–which is the sneaky way that insecurity/need to be liked gaslights me into agreeing to do things I may not want to actually do or have the time to get done without something else, something that actually matters more to me, being pushed aside or not getting the full attention it needs and deserves.
A Gregalicious is still a work in progress, apparently–even at sixty-one.
And on that note, this work isn’t going to do itself now, is it? Off to the spice mines with me–and will talk to you later, Constant Reader. Have a fabulous Saturday.
I’m not certain why waking up on Friday makes me happy–or as happy as one can be when going through the tedious process of waking up from slumber–but I am sure it has to do with a light day at the office and then two days at home that are free (well, free from the day job, at any rate; I work all weekends as it is), and of course I will have errands to run as always, writing to do, laundry and dishes to clean up, etc etc etc. I want to finish reading Gabino’s book this weekend, and of course I want to write and do some other things as well. It rained overnight–a quite marvelous thunderstorm–and it’s still rainy and damp this morning now that I have arisen. It felt rather marvelous to sleep last night. There’s really nothing like rain/thunderstorms to help one sleep when one is buried beneath a pile of comfortable and very warm blankets.
I did work on Mississippi River Mischief some last night–the first chapter wasn’t nearly as bad as I thought it was, but it needed some fixing and things and so I was more than happy to add about a thousand words to it as well as clean some of it up. I also recorded a video for an on-line conference for A Streetcar Named Murder. I had to clean off my desk and straighten up the kitchen in order to get it done, but it wasn’t as bad as I thought it would be to do, and I didn’t even mind seeing myself on video or hearing the recording of my voice as much as I usually do. Which was nice, of course–the initial shock of seeing how much older I look than I think I look seems to not be as great as it used to be. Acceptance? A final loss of vanity? Who knows? But it wasn’t as big an ordeal or as terrible as I feared it would be (few things ever are as terrible as I worry they will be, thanks to my vivid imagination). It’s also interesting to start transitioning into promo mode for A Streetcar Named Murder, which should be kind of different and fun than what I am used to experiencing when it comes to book promo.
I’m feeling good this morning, and my coffee is hitting the spot, and everything feels right, which is always a little unsettling for me as I inevitably wait for the other shoe to drop that is going to fuck everything up. It has always been my experience in life that there’s always another shoe about to drop. We finished watching one of the Fyre Festival documentaries last night–the Netflix one rather than Hulu, Fyre: The Greatest Party That Never Happened. As someone who has done event planning, and is married to someone who basically has been an event planner since 1998, oh my God, how we both were cringing. Sure, we had hindsight, but…as we watched as the disaster unfolded and the guests started arriving into the mess that had been created, one of the people involved with it kept talking about how, right up until the last minute, the guy in charge–Billy something, who actually turned out to be a sociopathic schemer–kept thinking and believing and convincing everyone that it would somehow all come together and work out at the last minute. I turned to Paul and said, “what’s really frightening about this is knowing I’ve been that person many many times, oh, it’ll all come together while not being entirely sure that it will but thinking that because it always has before. Have you ever felt like that?”
And he replied, “every weekend before the Festival starts I basically have a panic attack.”
No matter how many lists you make, no matter how much attention you pay, no matter how many reminder notes you scribble down somewhere, there’s always this fear that you forgot something important that’s going to rise up and bite you in the ass at the worst possible time. It always reminds me of that bit from The Shining about the boiler–“that what was forgotten” (although I knew in the beginning of the book, when the hotelier spent so much time explaining the boiler to Jack, that at some point it was going to blow the entire hotel to smithereens–SPOILER, sorry!).
In fact, I had completely forgotten that I had chaired World Horror Con in New Orleans whatever year that was; 2014? 2015? 2013? It really wasn’t terrible, but all those spinning plates…but I was cautious and careful and made sure nothing went awry, and overall it ran relatively smoothly. Funny that I had forgotten about that. Is it my age and getting older that has damaged my memory so badly? Or is it that the older you get the more you have to remember, so there’s limited room in my memory banks so things get stored deeper in my brain and aren’t as easily accessible? That’s better and easier to believe than my memory is faltering and synapses are no longer firing.
And on that note, I am going to head into the spice mines. Have a lovely and dry Friday, Constant Reader. I’ll check in with you again tomorrow.
Well, last night was a bit intense there for a while.
Yes, we had really horrific weather events down here last evening. I was sitting in my easy chair, relaxing and watching episodes of Young Justice when my phone started blaring the emergency alert. I knew there was a chance of tornadoes because we were having high winds all day (another emergency alert) and thunderstorms would be moving in during the early night. Sure enough, the wind was howling and the rain was coming down in torrents and lightning was flashing–and then my phone emergency alert started going off. I immediately paused the show and switched over to Margaret Orr on WDSU (since Nash Roberts retired, Ms. Orr has been my go-to local weatherperson, and saw that the “tornadic” (a new word to me) storm was on the West Bank–and there was another, separate one entirely, on the North Shore. The location of this tornadic storm placed it pretty much directly across the river from my neighborhood–needless to say, a bit terrifying knowing it was literally that close–but the path the storm was following indicated it would probably jump the river just below the French Quarter, into either the Marigny, Bywater or lower 9th ward neighborhoods. (Even more scary–I know a lot of people in those neighborhoods, so of course I was scrolling through social media rapidly making sure my friends were all okay and worrying.) Then came the visual confirmation there was actually a tornado on the ground over there–and yes, know and love people over on the West Bank as well–and then it jumped the river into the lower 9th.
I grew up with tornadoes–they weren’t common but did happen in Chicago; but of course, five years in Kansas. My first thought was great there are no basements in southeastern Louisiana and second was fuck there’s really not even an interior place for me to huddle in this apartment if it comes here and third was acceptance: oh well, if it comes this way hope for the best.
Seriously, y’all. Major major yikes.
I know at least one person died in St. Bernard Parish (Chalmette/Arabi), and I’m not seeing any estimates on damage yet (haven’t done a deep dive) but I do remember I drove through the East on a trip out of town after the tornado there a few years ago and being horrified by what I was seeing (not on the level of the ‘disaster drives’ I took around the city when I returned after Katrina, but still pretty fucking horrible; Katrina’s a very high bar, after all). I know thousands are still without power this morning, and I’m not sure how this is going to affect my work day–I don’t know if there’s power at the building, for example, but I think I would have heard something by now–but I wouldn’t be surprised if my appointments have a rather high percentage of no-shows today.
The new book’s cover reveal was graciously hosted by none other than Dru Ann Love this morning; you can find it right here! I love this cover–the look on the cat’s face, based on Scooter, is absolutely perfect–and I am very excited about the new book. I am hopeful it will become a series–it was a one-book only deal, so hopefully it will continue. Huzzah!
I did manage to get quite a bit done yesterday, and was tired a bit when I got home last night so wasn’t able to get any reading or much else of anything done other than watching Live Justice and the second episode of Minx (I have some thoughts on this show, which I am enjoying but not sure if I should be, if that makes sense? But I will discuss that more at another time, and feel like I need to give the show a few more episodes before making up my mind one way or another; I will say that the thing I found problematic in the first episode was that the main character–whom I liked–was very much a 70’s feminist stereotype: humorless, strident, angry–not that they didn’t have every right to be, mind you, but I often find that this lazy stereotype inevitably leads to lazy character development: let’s watch as the uptight opinionated humorless feminist learns how to relax and shed the systemic misogyny training she received as a woman growing up when she did, and of course, being around a porn publisher and porn models…you see what I mean? I like the positive representation of porn and the people who work in it, but…maybe I am making more of this than I should. I don’t know) before of course the tornado alarm went off on my phone, which shifted everything for the rest of the evening.
Paul’s moving into the hotel today so I will also be home alone for until Sunday night or Monday morning. Sigh, Festival widowhood staring me in the face again.
And on that note, tis off to the spice mines. Have a lovely and safe day, Constant Reader!
It was cold when I woke up this morning–but its warming up; definitely springtime in New Orleans where the differential between night and day can range from about ten degrees to as much as thirty. Yay?
Well, that there was an interruption, wasn’ it?
I took today off because I had appointments this morning–hello, Metairie!–and thus wasn’t able to get this finished before leaving the house. Sorry about that, y’all; I know how important it is to you all to get your started with Gregalicious and coffee, and I have failed you miserably, and on a Monday, too. There’s simply no excuse for this, is there? I am hanging my head in shame as I type.
But yesterday was a good one. I started reading Alex Segura’s marvelous Secret Identity, read some issues of the Nightwing Rebirth run, finished editing that manuscript I was working on (now I have to get the edits into the electronic version; I work on hard copies because I find electronic edits make it hard for me to see the overall story and its arc–which is one of the reasons I don’t edit much anymore. y old-fashioned methodology for working shouldn’t cost us the rain forest when it’s easier for me to stop doing that kind of work. I then started watching the Young Justice series on HBO MAX–which I really am enjoying as well; looks like Alex has dragged me back into the world of comics and super-heroes again for another round. I also went down some Nightwing Internet wormholes.
I really love Nightwing, if you couldn’t tell.
So today, now that my appointments are over and I am home, I think I’m going to take the rest of the day off. Yes, there’s always work I could be doing–always, but that doesn’t mean I can’t take some time away from the world every now and then. I need to get ready for the workshop I am teaching on Friday–it’s been soooooo long since I’ve taught; I definitely will need to do some rehearsing at home–and I also need to prepare for my panel on Saturday (why I hate moderating; if you’re on the panel you can just show up), but I have so much to do I am not going to get much chance to enjoy either the Tennessee Williams Festival or Saints & Sinners this year. Sunday I probably won’t even head down at all; I’ll need to get over two consecutive days of public speaking for one thing (just thinking about it wears me out) and then I have about two weeks to get ready for the trip to Albuquerque for Left Coast Crime (my first time ever).
I also stopped in the Barnes & Noble on Veterans’ while i was out there, between appointments, and picked up Rob Hart’s The Paradox Hotel and Mia P. Manansala’s two Tita Rosie’s Kitchen mysteries, Arsenic and Adobo and Homicide and Halo-Halo. I also got The New Orleans Voodoo Handbook by Kenaz Filan because, well, why not? I don’t know an awful lot about actual New Orleans Vodoun, and since I’ve been doing all these New Orleans and/or Louisiana deep dives over the last few years, I thought it time to get something to supplement Robert Tallant’s Voodoo in New Orleans, which I don’t think I trust entirely. That pretty much is the case with a lot of the old New Orleans histories–the trinity of Tallant, Lyle Saxon and Harnett T. Kane are suspect, and that’s a generous assessment–but they are interesting to look through and read to get a better grasp of the legends and stories.
And legends and stories can make an excellent starting place for my own fictions.
And on that note, I am heading back into the spice mines. Y’all have a good Monday, okay?
Yesterday was yet another day when I woke up feeling rested and invigorated. I had thought, oddly enough, that I hadn’t slept particularly well the night before–I woke up several times throughout the night, and the last time was five thirty, so I just kind of laid there in a half-sleep until the alarm went off. But oddly enough, I never hit the wall yesterday afternoon and I was also full of energy and highly functioning and got a lot of stuff taken care of, which was absolutely lovely. I hope to match that productivity today. I only have to work a partial day because I had to stay late the other day, so I am hoping to get some writing and editing done today as well, and make it to the gym once I complete my work-at-home duties. Fingers crossed!
I went to sleep later than I’d planned last night. We finished watching Dopesick, which is an amazing production with exceptional acting and writing, and then I went into a wormhole on Youtube and wound up staying up until midnight. I woke up early this morning–earlier than I’d wanted to, but hey, more time to get things done–and I think I slept relatively well last night. I am awake, after all, and not tired physically or mentally; I call that a win, really. I also finished reading Shucked Apart by Barbara Ross–more on that later–and started reading Guilty as Cinnamon by Leslie Budewitz, who is a favorite writer of mine and one I should read more of–I loved Assault and Pepper, the first in her Seattle Spice Shop series, this is the second.
I’ve also been reflecting a lot on my trip to Boston. I made a mistake the other day when I was talking about visiting the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum; I referred to reading about Mrs. Gardner in a book called The Grande Dames by Stephen Buckingham; his name was actually Birmingham. I think I can be forgiven for that error, primarily because Buckingham seems like a more likely last name for an American than Birmingham–and buck instead of birm is a very easy mistake to make, and therefore forgivable, despite my incredibly high standards for getting these facts correct. But I always loved the story of Mrs. Gardner, the ultimate diva and grande dame of Boston, and now that I’ve seen the Italian palazzo she built as a home for herself and her extraordinary art collection…I need to reread Mr. Birmingham’s book again. The museum was spectacular, just spectacular.
The day began with me looking out the window of my room at the Marriott Marquis in Times Square to see it was drizzling a bit outside; and I had to decide: lug my suitcase through the subway, or summon a Lyft, or walk ten blocks to the new train station, Moyhihan Hall? Being a hardy New Orleanian, I decided I’d just walk the ten blocks–my Fitbit would love all the steps–and as long as I could keep my glasses dry, I should be fine. It was just a drizzle, after all. So, I rode the elevator down and walked out the front door and walked over to 8th Avenue and headed downtown. It was, despite the slight drizzle, a lovely walk. I debated stopping for coffee along the way–I’d not had any (and it was actually rather delightful to not be so dependent on caffeine this trip as usual, and perhaps that’s why I had no issues sleeping?), but decided to wait till I got to Moynihan before getting coffee–what were the odds there wouldn’t be at least a Starbucks, if not a Dunkin’ Donuts, inside? I made good time, and was actually enjoying people watching as I made my way down 8th.
So, of course, about a block and a half from my final destination, the sky opened with a deluge worthy of a New Orleans street-flooding strength downpour. By the time I reached the train station I was completely soaked, but was also highly amused by it all. I had a three and a half hour train ride to Boston ahead of me, and I was really looking forward to getting back into the book I was reading–These Toxic Things by Rachel Howzell Hall, see the blog entry where I discussed how terrific the book was–and the Amtrak ride from New York to Boston is one of my favorite train trips–Connecticut is so scenic and beautiful, and the train hugs the coast most of the way, with spectacular views of bays and inlets and estuaries and boats and lovely homes. So I got my coffee, wiped off my head and glasses with napkins, and debated battling with my suitcase in the bathroom to get dry clothing–I decided against it eventually–and finally boarded my train and headed for one of my favorite cities that I never get to spend enough time in, Boston (I’ve always had an affinity for the city because I love history, and of course, Boston was pivotal in the American Revolution, and Johnny Tremain is set there, and I love that book). Alas, the scenery was perhaps not as spectacular along the route as it usually is; it rained and was gray and cloudy and overcast the entire way, and whenever I tried to take a picture by aiming my phone at the window, all I got was a gray photo of water beaded up on glass and nothing beyond, which was terribly disappointing. But this lack of ability to take great scenic photos enabled me to focus on the book, which I was absolutely loving (see blog entry from several days ago where I discuss the phenomenal novel at great length). It was raining in Boston when the train pulled into the station, and my wonderful friends were there to pick me up, and we headed for the Gardner Museum.
I could spend days in that museum, seriously. The building itself is breathtakingly beautiful–as are the Sargent portraits of Mrs. Gardner on display–and so much other amazing art: paintings and sculptures and tapestries; the Velazquez painting of Philip IV of Spain that is perhaps the most famous image of that sad Hapsburg king; everywhere you look there is a spectacularly beautiful piece of art. It’s overwhelming, and even more awe-inspiring perhaps than even the Uffizi in Florence–you expect the palaces and collections of European nobility and royalty to be spectacular; and to be sure, Mrs. Gardner’s home and collection pales in comparison to that of the Medici, but she was an American heiress…and even though she was fabulously wealthy, to me even the wealthiest of the robber barons pale in comparison to the sumptuous palazzos of the Renaissance Italians. But it’s still an impressive collection, if not a Medici one, and that’s why I think it’s more impressive. Mrs. Gardner was simply a wealthy woman, not a Renaissance lady or princess or queen. She couldn’t be expected to compete, and yet…the collection is exceptional and extraordinary, as was the woman herself.
And of course, as a crime writer, the robbery–the empty frames that once held Rembrandts brazenly stolen and yet to be recovered still on display–is also fascinating to me, particularly since I love treasure hunts.
I am forever grateful to my friends Stuart and Robbie for taking me there–and I plan to visit again sometime.
Crime Bake, the event put on jointly sponsored by the New England chapters of Sisters in Crime and Mystery Writers of America, was why I went to Boston in the first place, so Stuart and Robbie dropped me off in Dedham at my hotel (which was where the event was) and I got a lovely night’s sleep–again, a complete shock, but is it a mere coincidence that the coffee I had at the train station was the only cup I had that day?–and I got up early the next morning for the breakfast buffet and to start attending panels. When I said earlier that I’d forgotten how much I love listening to writers speak about writing, and books, and everything to do with being a writer, I was not kidding. I haven’t been to anything like Crime Bake since the Williams Festival in March 2019; I missed that year’s Bouchercon because I developed an inner ear infection and couldn’t fly. It was so inspirational. I listened to writers I admired and writers I wasn’t aware of, and was scribbling notes in my journal the entire day. It was marvelous! And inspiring. I’ve talked on here a lot about feeling disconnected from writing and publishing; part of it was not being around writers and listening to them talk about craft, what inspires them, how they work, how they develop and flesh out their ideas–the joys and heartaches and the Imposter Syndrome–because writing can be a very lonely business (it’s just you, the keyboard and the computer screen much of the time), and it’s nice to connect with others and realize we all go through the same thing, the same frustrations, the same heartaches and aggravations and joys.
Today I have a lot of catching up to do–what else is new?–and I am hoping to get some writing done around my work-at-home duties. Wish me luck, Constant Reader, and have a lovely Thursday!
Queer and Loathing in America 