Tag: The Pallbearer’s Club

Love is Like a Butterfly

Tuesday morning and I feel good again. I was very tired when I got home from work yesterday (my supervisor being in Europe is just as stressful as I suspected it would be), and just kind of chilled out last night. I did start outlining what I’ve already written on the Scotty, and I did start looking at stories for this anthology I am going to try to submit something for–I think I can finally change and edit a certain story that’s been in my files for decades. We started watching the new Menendez Brothers documentary on Netflix last night, and will probably finish it tonight. And despite the stress of yesterday morning, I did manage to get all my work done at the office, so I am pretty caught up.

I am going to Alabama this weekend; I heard from Dad and so I am going to drive up there after work on Friday, and come back home on Sunday; a short visit with Dad and then back home. I am going to go up to Kentucky later this month; I need to reschedule some things, but that’s all do-able.

I just looked at the Hurricane Milton updates and am very worried about all my friends who live in Florida. I lived in Tampa for five years in the nineties, when I worked for Continental Airlines; yes, the Tampa airport is the airport where I worked, with the white shirt with epaulets and the navy blue pants and the name tag. (The opening scene of The Orion Mask is set at Tampa Airport; my main character was an airline employee.) We never had anything really major happen there of a tropical nature when I lived there, so it was never anything I worried about before moving to New Orleans. I think about the barrier islands in Tampa Bay, and how narrow the peninsula that St. Petersburg sits on actually is; it’s not impossible that this monster storm could wipe a lot of that area clean. I remain hopeful that somehow this won’t be the coming disaster it appears to be; I can’t even imagine how bad the best case scenario could be. There was significant wind damage to New Orleans with Katrina, which people tend to forget about because of the catastrophic flood that ensued when the levees failed. Roofs will come off, trees will be uprooted and flung about with great force; if it’s as strong as they are saying it could be when it comes ashore, the wind could move cars. I hope everyone gets out that is able. It turns my stomach to think about what could happen there. I hope none of it comes to pass–but I am also realistic. I hope everyone I care about who lives in Florida was able to get out and is okay, and worst case scenarios do not come to pass.

I think I’m going to take Gabino with me to Alabama, and I was looking for a horror novel to listen to in the car, and I am leaning towards listening to Paul Tremblay’s Survivor Song or The Pallbearer’s Club. I do love his writing, though, so it’s fun to read Tremblay; but I do love his work and he’s probably one of my favorite horror writers of this current epoch of horror fiction. I’ll have to pick out some more later for the trip up to Kentucky.1 It seems a bit surreal to be thinking about trips and such things–the minutiae of life–while destruction looms for Florida, doesn’t it? (And what does this mean for the Florida football team? They are on the road at Tennessee this weekend, but supposed to be playing at home the following weekend; I suspect that game will be moved to Lexington.) It’ll be hot without power, but at least October is cooler than August or September. Small favors, indeed.

And on that sad note, I am heading into the spice mines. Keep everyone in the path of the storm in your thoughts, and send some positivity their way–and hope they won’t need it.

  1. It also just occurred to me that I am being counter-intuitive with the trip up there; there’s certainly no reason for me to go from weekend to weekend; I can also go during the week and come back the following week. I hate being so obtuse as to think that ‘trip for a week’ means Sunday to Sunday. ↩︎

Gotta Travel On

The Ides of April and Tax Day, huzzah. I’ve filed for an extension for mine because I just couldn’t deal with it before, which is kind of childish and more than a little immature; the key word here is avoidance. But I plan to get it all finished this week, God willing and the creek don’t rise. I am going into the office a little later than I usually do, because I have to swing by the Cat Practice to get Sparky’s food on the way to the office. It’s an Admin Day, so not a big deal for me to not be there as early as usual.

I feel rested and good this morning, which is a very pleasant change and surprise. I did go to bed a little early last night, but I spent most of the day writing in my journal, watching documentaries, and later on in the evening we watched more episodes of The Gentlemen. I also finally looked up the name of the star, Theo James, because it was bothering me that I recognized him and couldn’t place him. I am liking it a lot more than I would have thought, frankly; not being a big fan of producer/showrunner Guy Ritchie, but it’s actually quite fun. I also went down some rabbit holes of research yesterday, which is always a lot of fun for me. I also started reading Paul Tremblay’s The Pallbearer’s Club, which I had a little trouble getting into at first, but I remembered having this issue with A Head Full of Ghosts, too–like the latter, he’s playing with form and style and point of view in the former, which is a bit hard to get used to it, so it’s slow going (for me) at first, but as always, there’s such depth and compassion in his writing it’s easy to see why his career has taken off. I’ll try to read some more of it when I get home from work tonight, after I do the day’s writing. I am definitely planning on writing every day now, even if it’s just a little something. I made lots of notes yesterday in my journal, too, which was very cool.

I decided yesterday, when watching a lengthy documentary of LSU football highlights (I was doing this around chores, listening to the documentary while Sparky and Paul slept on the couch) that one of the problems I’ve been facing with writing lately, something I’ve talked about on here a lot, is how I’ve not really been able to focus all of my creative energies on anything that I am writing, but have any number of things in-progress that my mind keeps attention-deficiting between, skittering around between projects and ideas without really landing effectively on anything for long enough to get very far. Yesterday I decided, as I grabbed the journal and hit play on the documentary that I was going to free-form take notes and scribble out ideas as they came to me, regardless of what they were about or for, even if they were entirely new project notes. I did a lot of scribbling, and most of it focused on one project, which really needs to get done by the end of the year, as well as some others I was a bit surprised still were there and fresh in my mind. I also know now that if I rewrite at least three of these short stories drafts that I have on hand, that collection will be complete.

I also found the voice for a new project idea I’ve had in the front of my mind for a while, primarily because we watched those ‘troubled teen cure’ documentaries at the end of the previous week. I had an idea for one set in Kansas, based on a foster home where the kids went to my high school. I didn’t think much of it when I was in high school–other than how much harder those kids had it than the rest of us–and sometime in the years since high school I thought, I could write a crime novel around that story even though it would entirely be fictional and the real place was simply a starting point for my fictionalization. The title came to me this weekend–The Crooked Y–and so that’s definitely moving up the list of “what to write next.”

As you can tell, writing is becoming more important to me and it feels good for my mind to be creating again, even in this current ADHD way, which is so much better than the dry well experience I’ve been having since…well, since Mom died, really. 2023 was a lot of personal trauma; and relentless from January on, which makes it not surprising, I suppose, that my brain has been fallow for so long.

And on that note, I am going to start getting ready to head into the spice mines for the day. Have a great Monday, Constant Reader, and I may be back later.

Turn Me Loose

Sunday morning blog after an uneventful yet sort of productive day yesterday. Our Internet went out around one yesterday afternoon, and was essentially in and out (mostly out) until about eight o’clock last night. I did finish reading my book, which was superb (more on The Cypress House later) and I did get two more blog post drafts finished, which felt great. I ran my errands, cooked outside last night, and did some cleaning up around here as well. When it came back and we could watch television, we finished Pray Away and moved onto The Gentlemen, which we are really enjoying, on Netflix.

It was actually nice not having Internet, if odd–you never realize how much you depend on it until you don’t have it, seriously–because I was able to relax all day, instead of getting caught up on the news (rage-inducing, as always) or watching old LSU football highlights (always a joy) or finding new documentaries to watch. Pray Away was the final step in our “teenager abuse programs” watching, following The Program and Hell Camp, and what’s truly frightening is the gaslighting involved, for both kid and their parents–and that the troubled teen industry is still chugging along, abusing kids and bilking their parents of money. I’ve never wanted to do a conversion therapy story–I briefly touched on this in Baton Rouge Bingo and again in Royal Street Reveillon; that Taylor’s parents wanted to send him to one in Mississippi. I had also talked about a conversion therapy camp in Mississippi before in other works, some of them my Todd Gregory stuff, and maybe someday that will come to fruition in some way. Watching all these documentaries has put me in mind of how to write about one in a Scotty book or a stand-alone; there’s also another idea for a mystery/crime novel I’ve been thinking about a lot as I watched these horrific documentaries, only set in Kansas. (Oddly enough I find myself thinking about Kansas a lot more and more these days, not sure what that’s all about.)

I also was looking through books yesterday after I finished the Koryta to decide what to read next, and I was having trouble deciding; mainly because I have so many damned fine books to read in the TBR stack. I also ordered two more books yesterday morning–poems by Mary Oliver, recommended by the fabulous Carol Rosenfeld (me trying to learn more about poetry and start appreciating it) and the newest Scott Carson (which is a pseudonym for Michael Koryta). I think I am going to read The Pallbearer’s Club by Paul Tremblay (I’m a huge fan) while also embarking on a reread of Thomas Tryon’s The Other, which was probably one of the most influential books I read when I was a kid. I am still reading Rival Queens as my current non-fiction, and I am thinking that The King’s Assassin, the basis for the incredible new Starz series Mary and George (which you should be watching) and again, a period of history I’ve always been fascinated by, and watching the show has given me an idea about how I could approach another project that’s been in the files for almost two decades.

Today I intend to write and read and clean and organize for most the day, although I am sure once Paul gets up we’ll start streaming The Gentlemen again. I have some blog entries I also want to finish writing, and of course, there’s all kinds of writing that I need to get done today as well. I’ve been really scattered with my writing this year, and part of it has been an inability to focus on just one project with my usual laser-like focus, and that’s why I’ve not been able to get anything much done this year. This morning I feel more awake and focused than I have in a long time, which is great. Once I finish this and my review of The Cypress House I’ll get cleaned up, read for a bit, and pick up around here before focusing in on what I want to get written today. Being organized helps, and if I could simply manage to stay organized rather than just letting things pile up everywhere, I wouldn’t have to do as much cleaning and straightening and organizing as I always do on the weekends.

The Lefty Awards were presented last night in Seattle at Left Coast Crime, and I was very delighted to see the results this morning–Tracy Clark, Best Novel, Hide; Nina Simon, Best Debut, Mother-Daughter Murder Club; Naomi Hirohara, Best Historical, Evergreen; and Best Humorous, Wendall Thomas, Cheap Trills. I don’t know Nina, but the other three winners are friends, which is delightful, and I couldn’t be happier for Naomi, Tracy, and Wendall–who was on that Humor panel I had to step in to moderate at Bouchercon in San Diego last year, and was wonderful. Kudos to all winners and nominees!

And on that note, I am heading into the spice mines. Have a great Sunday, Constant Reader, and I will chat with you again later!

The hunky Alan Ritchson, starring in Prime’s Reacher, did an interview recently calling out evangelicals and Trump supporters, who got all in their feelings and have decided not to watch the show anymore. Sounds like ‘cancel culture’ to me. How woke!