Tag: The Chain

The Power of Goodbye

Monday morning and a return with me to the spice mines. Sparky again let me sleep late yesterday, which was nice, and I didn’t feel bone tired when I got up, either; Saturday was a bit hit or miss for the day, frankly. But I did get up, worked on a newsletter as well as cleaning up computer files (and finishing some unfinished chores from Saturday) before turning on the Saints game at noon and sitting in my easy chair with my laptop and an early lunch snack of mozzarella salad, which I love. Paul came down to watch and nap with Sparky during the game, so we were all in the living room like the sweet little family we are, and when I am the most content. That literally is my happy place.

In one of those weird moments, the other night (Friday, to be exact) we were running around doing our errands and one of my favorite songs, Fleetwood Mac’s “The Chain,” came up on the mix, and as I was humming along with the lyrics one in particular stood out to me. The thought process went something like this: “Running through the shadows, chain chain chain, we go together, running through the shadows…hmmm, running through the shadows is a great title, wait didn’t I have a story in an anthology called that yes I think I did and I think my story was called “The Rosary of Broken Promises” and the main character was the Oracle of Orange Street, my psychic I wanted to write a book about”–it was something like that. Anyway, imagine my delight and surprise to find an email about that anthology in my inbox Saturday morning. (I don’t, however, read emails on the weekend; I only delete them.) I’ll read it later on, when I am more functional and awake.

The Saints did win, which was a lovely way for the day to go, and then we watched the first two episodes of The Traitors: New Blood, which is quite fun, and retired to bed relatively early to get a jump on the morning today, which I did. I only hit snooze the once, and got up, feeling rested and relaxed this morning over my coffee and a slice of coffee cake. We finished Reacher off over the weekend, and tonight, it’s back to Lanterns. I also actually wrote for a while yesterday–working on a short story that is due soon, clocking in at about fourteen hundred words, which was nice and felt good. I also finished paying the bills this weekend, and we get paid again on Wednesday this week. I also sent out my latest newsletter, about The Stepford Wives. I’m not sure what the next one will be about, and the goal is to get it out on Wednesday or Thursday, but we’ll have to see how that goes, won’t we? I have a few that are close to completion; we’ll have to see how it all goes, won’t we, though? The kitchen is a bit of a mess this morning, alas, so after running an errand or two on the way home, I am going to have to pick up around here a bit before going to the easy chair for some Sparky time.

LSU is still ranked in the Top Ten this week, and I am very pleased with how zen I am about the loss on Saturday night. I’m even happy for the Mississippi fans1; they haven’t had much for a very long time, so more power to them and I wish them well on the season. We still don’t know how good either team is, but they are about equal, really. Texas A&M will be fired up after losing to Kentucky (!!!) this past weekend, but…it’s at LSU, so it will be loud and raucous in the stadium. I didn’t read any write-ups, local or national, on the game this past weekend because I don’t need to know anything more than the result. I like this new policy of “it’s just a game” and just enjoying it for what it is–something I enjoy watching–without all the emotional ups and downs and swings from watching. That actually isn’t fun, and neither are the “trash talk” bullshit, either. Whether LSU wins or not doesn’t change or affect anything in my life unless I allow it to–and while a lot of people seem to enjoy that aspect, I don’t and never have.

And unless you’re on the field and in uniform, there’s no “we” or “us” when you’re nothing more than a fan–even less so if you’re not an alum. As someone who is not an alum of LSU (I just live here), I try to be careful in never including myself as part of LSU as anything other than a local fan with opinions, usually based on what I’ve watched on the field. Yes, I want LSU to do well, but if they don’t–the sun will still rise in the morning and my alarm will continue to go off at six every day.

Ed Sheeran has only made things worse after performing Saturday night in Philadelphia? I’ve stopped paying attention because at this point he’s managed to make everything somehow about him and his poor choices; it has always been my experience that if you have to cry and tell everyone you’re not a bad person…well, you might be a bad person. Your mistake was caving into that Kraft creature. It doesn’t seem like you’re even aware of what you did wrong….and a little bit of advice? Maybe stop centering yourself in everything? No one was asking you to speak about Palestine, you know; they were mad because you caved to a billionaire’s demands instead of standing on principle. That was your mistake, and that’s the one you need to acknowledge–you are complicit in that. It’s not a good look, Gingerdoodle. That’s why everyone on both sides is mad at you–and you need to save your anger and reproaches for Pink–she started this whole mess.

Again, don’t get into parasocial relationships with celebrities. They will always disappoint you because you actually don’t know them at all.

Sigh.

And on that note, I am heading into the spice mines. Have a lovely Monday, Constant Reader, and I will see you again tomorrow morning.

  1. It also doesn’t hurt to remember that when Nick Saban came back to college football at Alabama, that we beat them his first year there. ↩︎

Feelin’ Stronger Every Day

Sunday and the sun is shining. Does that mean rain won’t be in today’s forecast? Don’t be silly–of course it’s going to rain today. It rains every day in New Orleans, and if things go as they usually do, it will probably start raining right around the time I light the charcoal today.

The more things change, the more the stay the same.

I slept really well last night, and even allowed myself the luxury of staying in the oh-so-comfy bed for another, extra hour. It was lovely sleeping a little extra, quite nice. I am now awake, feeling refreshed and alive (I also stretched yesterday, and used the foam rubber back rolling self-massage thingee that actually does work to a degree; it’s not the same as a strong deep tissue massage from a licensed therapist, but it does the trick of loosening up the  back muscles nicely, which in turn relaxes me and relieved some of the stress I carry in my oh-so-tight back muscles) and in a moment I am going to clean the kitchen, preparatory to getting back to work on the WIP. I actually wrote yesterday–I know, I know, shocking–and really started pushing through Chapter Nineteen, and as always, even though I really had no idea what to do with the chapter, I started figuring it out as I went. I stopped when Paul woke up and came downstairs–yesterday was his “do nothing day” of the weekend, and then we spent some time together. We got caught up on Animal Kingdom, finished streaming CNN’s The 2000’s (I highly recommend CNN”s decade docuseries, for a refresher course in how we got to where we are today, for all those who apparently have forgotten), and then started watching Amazon Prime’s The Boys, which is an extremely interesting, and dark, take on superheroes–it asks the question, what if superheroes weren’t all selfless helpers? And it’s going to probably get much darker–and we are really enjoying it thus far.

Also, when I started working on my writing yesterday I closed my web browsers. Yes, I tried to go cold turkey with my social media–but kept my phone nearby in case I couldn’t quite make it. It was actually kind of nice, to be honest, to be away from it for most of the day; I think if we all took social media breaks–even for just half-a-day–it would be so amazing for our inner peace. Several years ago I started a new thing where I don’t answer emails from five o’clock on Friday thru eight a.m. on Monday; I will check my emails, and delete the junk, and might even answer some–but the answers go into the “saved drafts” folder until Monday morning, when I send them all. Emails, you see, beget emails, and I don’t want to spend time on the weekends constantly answering emails.

Sometimes you have to just walk away from the Internet.

I also managed to try–and maybe succeed–to figure out what is going to happen in the final act of the book. I have six chapters left to write (assuming I finish Chapter Nineteen today, which I think I can do, and might even start Chapter Twenty) and while the manuscript is a complete and total mess, I know what I have left to have happen, and am still not completely convinced on how precisely to end the book; I know I have to wrap up everything, and the second draft is going to be brutal on me to write, as I reorganize and cut things and add things and move things around–it certainly would have helped when I started writing this bitch to know how I planned to end the damned thing–but I think it’s going to end up being a truly amazing piece of work when I do get it to where I want it to be. I don’t recommend the writing methodology I used in writing this book by any means–this might be the first time I went full-on pantser (at least, that I can recall at the moment) while writing a book, and I really don’t, don’t, don’t recommend it. It’s probably why it’s taking me so long to finish this draft, and why it’s taken me longer than I keep thinking it will every time I try to figure out when I am going to get it finished once and for all. It was supposed to have been finished by the end of February, and here it is, a few days out from August, and it still isn’t finished.

Much as I love the characters, and I love the story, I am really going to enjoy being away from it for a few months before I start working on it again.

I also started reading Steph Cha’s absolutely marvelous Your House Will Pay yesterday morning, and the writing in it is a revelation. I knew Steph could write, from reading  Follow Her Home earlier this year as part of the Diversity Project (and I really need to finish reading her Juniper Song series), but this is positively blowing me away. The careful construction of characters, and family relationships, is exceptionally well crafted and extremely well done. I am going to take a break for a moment this morning, and devote an hour to Your House Will Pay, although I suspect I’ll wind up spending the rest of the day with it, which is what happened with Angie Kim’s terrific debut Miracle Creek. 

Damn, there are some fucking amazing books out there this year. Laura Lippman’s Lady in the Lake, which I am waiting to get a signed copy when she is at Garden District Books here in August, is tearing up the reviews lately, and I seriously can’t wait to spend a weekend with la Lippman’s prose again. This week, I also got Adrian McKinty’s The Chain, Chuck Wendig’s Wanderers, and Colson Whitehead’s The Nickel Boys; all of which sound terrific and are getting rave reviews everywhere. There’s just so little time these days I can devote to reading, and it breaks my heart a little bit–especially when I remember how I used to spend so much time reading when I worked at home.

Gosh, how I missed the days when I spent the mornings on correspondence, wrote or edited all afternoon before going to the gym, and then spent the early evenings reading until Paul came home.

Heavy sigh. Perhaps someday again–or sooner, if I start limiting my screen time more extremely.

Today’s appreciation post is for Holly West and her anthology Murder-a-Go-Go’s. I invited myself, basically, to write a story for this anthology–Holly’s story had been accepted into Florida Happens, and I’d noticed her tweeting about her Go-Go’s anthology, so I decided for once to be forward and mention, during our correspondence about her now Anthony Award-nominated story “The Best Laid Plans,” that I wished I’d known about it because as a huge Go-Go’s fan, I would have loved to have written something for it. Rather than ignoring my broad hints, or brushing them aside, Holly very graciously told me she had a few slots still open and she would love to see something from me. I think the stories I  had to choose from were for the songs “Yes or No,” “This Town,” and there was one more I don’t remember right now. Of the three songs, “Yes or No” is my favorite, and there was a germ of a story there, of course. I started writing it, and got a few paragraphs in, but wasn’t really feeling the story. (I’ll probably go back and finish that story someday.)  I then looked up the lyrics for “This Town,” and as I read them, I saw the dark, noir potential to them, and in my head I saw these five sorority girls on Fat Tuesday, weaving their drunken way up Bourbon Street, and I knew that was the story I was going to write. I let Holly know which song I was using, and then sat down and wrote about a four thousand word first draft in about three hours–and knew I’d chosen the right story. I worried about the subject matter, and I also worried about the voice–getting the voice of a college girl wasn’t going to be easy, and neither was the subject matter. I revised it a few times, and then crossed my fingers and sent it in. (The worst time is when you submit something and then wait to hear back, certain you’ve done a good job and written not only something publishable but something rather good–but it’s always subjective, and you are always subject to the tastes of the editor.) You can imagine my relief when Holly loved the story and gave me a few notes, which I was more than happy to incorporate into “This Town.”

“This Town” is also one of those rare times when a story of mine has gone into print and I’ve gotten feedback–all of it positive–from readers. As someone who is very insecure about his short story writing abilities (thanks again, Dr. Dixon, you worthless piece of shit), you can only imagine how lovely that was–particularly since I’d been feeling a lot of Imposter Syndrome over my career the last few years.

So thank you, Holly, for the opportunity to write and publish “This Town.” Buy the book, Constant Reader–it’s also a fundraiser for Planned Parenthood, so it’s a chance to help an under-insured woman get some health care and read a darned good book of crime short stories as well.

And now, back to the spice mines.

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