Tag: This Fresh Hell

World of Make Believe

I woke up reluctantly this morning to rain, which will be off and on all day, and probably getting worse as the day progresses. Okay, pretty much the same as yesterday. We were on the edge of the cone yesterday, and today we are just outside of it, expecting tropical storm conditions at worst for the moment when she gets here, and it’s going to be relatively nasty both tomorrow and Thursday morning. The whole thing should be over and past by Thursday afternoon. The models kept shifting yesterday; first we were outside, then inside, then back outside again. The agency hasn’t made any announcements yet, but I think I don’t want to drive in tropical storm conditions so might just take tomorrow off and ride this out at home.

The irony that I am writing a book set during tropical weather has not escaped me. I really didn’t need a reminder of riding out a storm.

I am also seeing recommendations that everyone stay home Wednesday and Thursday, and little as I want to use my paid time off to not go into the office, I think my own personal safety and that of my car is more important than my job. Of course, we are completely unprepared–no bread, and probably won’t be able to get any at this point as people have probably already lost their minds about the storm. I still have a case of water from last year’s salt intrusion in the Mississippi, so we’re at least ahead on that score, and of course, we have a lot of candles. God, I hope we don’t lose power. We won’t lose much food, thank heavens, because I’ve been trying to use up everything in the house in order to combat my food anxiety (from being poor in my younger years) and not have a fully stocked house filled with food I never get around to eating.

Yesterday was a low energy day; I managed to get all my work done at the office but was dragging by the time I came home. I didn’t do any writing when I got home, but we watched The Deliverance last night, which was really interesting. It’s based on a true story, apparently, which makes it even more interesting, and the acting was phenomenal. I love urban horror–it’s so much more creepy when horror is set in an urban area, where the suspension of belief is even harder to pull off. A remote creepy big house in the middle of nowhere? Easy to go down that path than to think the house at the end of the block or across the street is haunted, you know? I’ve always wanted to write a great ghost story set in New Orleans.

Also, This Fresh Hell, an anthology I contributed a story to last year, has been short-listed for the Ditmer award for Best Collection! That’s exciting, and I am delighted for the editors. The story I contributed, “Solace in a Dying Hour,” is one of my personal favorites, and is one of my few Louisiana stories that isn’t set in New Orleans. That’s also a story I wrote post-pandemic, and so I guess I have been doing good work since the world shut down four years ago, but it was such a completely miserable time that it seems like I didn’t really write anything good. I also didn’t get as much work done as per my usual, which was a part of the entire self-recrimination thing. I’ve also realized, going through these old Scotty books, that I’ve always considered the ones after the first three as different from the first three. And they are, in many ways, but as always, rather than thinking it through I just thought I wasn’t doing as good of work on that series…but in thinking it through, I realized that mentally it’s like two different series; because there were the first three over four years, and changed publishers with it, starting it again about three or four years after the third came out. By the time I wrote another Scotty, things were different. Publishing had changed. There really weren’t ebooks when the first three came out. Working on the first three was a matter of getting corrected manuscripts in the mail, fixing everything, and then sending them another two copies of the corrected manuscript, and on and on. By the time I wrote Vieux Carre Voodoo, everything was being done electronically, and thus could move a lot faster than the olden days. It’s not that I worked harder on the earlier ones, but it was harder to publish and edit the old way, and time-consuming. And since that was the way I learned how to revise and rewrite and make corrections, in my mind I defaulted to this is the way it’s supposed to be done and I’ve never gotten comfortable with the new way, even if 90% of my books were done that way.

And the clinic is closed for the storm tomorrow. We don’t have bread, and it’s probably impossible to find any now…but we do have crackers. And protein shakes. And lots of soda.

I hope we don’t lose power.

And on that note, I am heading into the spice mines. Have a lovely day, and everyone in the path, stay safe!

Screenshot

Sweet Time

And it’s New Year’s Eve.

I slept well last night but my blankets were all tangled up this morning, indicating the sleep was more restless than it has been for weeks. I also wasn’t in the mood to write my blog when I first woke up, so I decided to read, drink my coffee, and maybe have some breakfast before getting cleaned up. I usually write this over my morning coffee, and since I don’t reread or re-edit once it’s written, that could explain the run-on sentences, word repetitions, and occasional poor grammar no one ever points out to me. This blog began nineteen years ago (!!!) on Livejournal (the anniversary was 12/26), migrated over here in about 2016 or so, and still somehow keeps chugging along. It always surprises me that people read it, to be honest. It was always meant mainly for me, and was originally intended as a daily exercise to get me writing again. I guess it worked. When I started I had published four novels, a few anthologies, and some short stories. Nineteen years later, I’ve way surpassed that total, despite some fallow years in which I produced nothing.

I did some more picking up around here yesterday while watching football games. It was fun watching Mississippi beat Penn State, and don’t even get me started on the Florida State-Georgia game. I get the disappointment at not making the play-offs, but you also knew you were scheduled to play Georgia, another team disappointed in not making the play-offs, but instead of showing everyone that the committee was wrong and showing up to beat Georgia…and Georgia also had star players injured and over a dozen opting out and even more entering the transfer portal. This would have been a play-off game had either Auburn or Georgia beaten Alabama this year, but that’s how things go. Auburn went 13-0 in 2004 and wasn’t invited to the BCS title game. You don’t always get what you want in life or sport, and the question is how you handle that. If this was going to be the case, don’t accept the damned bowl bid. Your fans spent a lot of money to go to that game, and it was incredibly disrespectful to the team, the fanbase, and the university to show up and get embarrassed like that. After Coach O was fired in 2021, LSU went to its bowl game with 39 scholarship players and got trounced by Kansas State….but how does it appear in the record books? KSU 42, LSU 21. Twenty years from now when people look back at the history of college football and bowl games, it will read Georgia 63, Florida State 3. It’s a program and culture problem, and all the FSU fans apologizing for this disgraceful beating–do you quit when you don’t get a raise or promotion you worked hard for and feel like you deserved? The word for that is quitter…and for the record, Georgia played it’s back-ups, walk-ons and so forth in the second half and still beat your ass 21-0.

And if LSU went 12-0 and didn’t get picked for the play-offs…and pulled the same shit? Sure, I’d be angry about the play-offs but I’d also call out the Tigers for embarrassing the state and the university that way.

I’m really enjoying Danielle Arsenault’s Glory Be, and am savoring every word. What a fresh and unique voice! I have to say I am so glad I realized I needed to be better about my reading choices and should read more diverse writers. It’s been a great education for me as a reader, a writer, a person and a citizen. I’m still learning how to be better about race and gender and gender identity and sexuality; and I strongly encourage other readers to do the same. Crime fiction is so much stronger and healthier when it represents everyone, I think, and while I don’t consider reading diverse writers to be the total education I need on any social issues facing the country–I need to read more non-fiction and theory.

I rewatched The Birds yesterday after the football games, and it was pretty much as I remembered it. I’d only seen it twice before; originally as a child edited for television, when it frightened me so badly that I had nightmares (I was prone to them growing up) and for years could never see crows on a jungle gym or a wire without feeling uneasy and then again as a rental in college after I’d read the short story again and wanted to see how faithful the film was to the story. I didn’t care as much for it the second time around–the acting is really terrible and so is the script–but the suspenseful parts still held up and were scary. This third time around confirmed my second viewing; and I noticed some other flaws in the picture. Rod Taylor’s mother isn’t much older than he is, and why is there about a thirty year age gap between him and his sister? I think the short story is better than the film, but I can also see why people like it. I do consider it one of Hitchcock’s lesser films.

Since tomorrow is a day for thinking ahead and coming up with some goals for the new year, I suppose today should be a recap of sorts of this past year. It was, as I mentioned in a previous entry, a rather up-and-down rollercoaster of highs and lows with very little level ground in the middle. The recognition of mainstream award nominations for my work–even queer work–was a delightful surprise this past year. But even more important than that is I think my work is getting better. I had felt, some years ago, that my writing was becoming stale and that I wasn’t growing as a writer anymore; I’d become stagnant and that was one of my biggest fears. I wound up deciding to take some time away from writing books on deadline and write things just for me, things that I wanted to write but also wanted to take the time to do correctly. It was during this time that I worked on both #shedeservedit and Bury Me in Shadows in early drafts, and also started the novellas and working more intently on my short stories. I accepted the challenge of writing stories to themed anthologies, and produced some terrific ones of which I am really proud. When I dove back into series work with Royal Street Reveillon, I wanted to write something non-formulaic for the Scotty series. I also wanted to shake things up with Scotty a bit, as the series was getting a bit too comfortable and safe for me. Royal Street Reveillon certainly was neither comfortable nor safe, and neither was Mississippi River Mischief.

Bury Me in Shadows was not easy for me to write. When I went back to the book after setting it aside for awhile, I realized several things: I couldn’t ignore race and racism, I had to address the Lost Cause narrative, and I also had realized while doing more reading and research that the stories my paternal grandmother used to tell me about the Civil War and Alabama and the family were apocryphal stories you can turn up about almost everywhere in the rural South. The book wasn’t working, in fact, because I was trying to elide those issues because I was afraid of doing it wrong…so it pushed me to do better. And actually addressing those issues made the book easier to write. The same thing was true of #shedeservedit; I’d been working on this book in one form or another since I actually lived in Kansas. But again, I realized when I went back to it that what I was doing didn’t work because I wasn’t going there with toxic masculinity and rape culture because it wasn’t personal enough for my main character, and so I bit the bullet and made it more personal for him. It dredged up a lot of memories, some of them painful, but it also made the book better and stronger. I had been wanting to write a cozy for the longest time, and decided to try it for something different and new–and that became A Streetcar Named Murder. I was also very pleased with it, even though the deadline and the turnaround on it was a bit insane…but I still managed to take my time and turned it into something I was proud of when I got the final author copies.

My two releases of this year–Death Drop and Mississippi River Mischief–are also books of which I feel proud. I also published three terrific short stories this year: “Solace in a Dying Hour” in This Fresh Hell; “The Ditch” in School of Hard Knox; and “The Rosary of Broken Promises” in Dancing in the Shadows.

I think I’m settling finally into an acceptance that I am pretty good at what I do. I may not have the master’s or PhD in creative writing or literature of any kind; but I’ve never really wanted to be an academic writer. I never wanted to be Faulkner, but Faulkner did inspire me to interconnect novels and stories in my own fictional world (also Stephen King). I would like to do some non-fiction studies of genre and writers I enjoy, but in an accessible rather than academic way. Academics used to make me feel stupid and uneducated, and I also used to envy those writers who had that kind of background because I felt it made their work stronger than mine, or gave them insights into writing and building a novel that I’d never had, which made me and my work somehow lesser. But that wasn’t on them; that was on me. I was the one who felt inferior and lesser, not talented or good enough. That chip was on my shoulder and I was the one who put it there. My peers actually consider me a peer, and newer writers look at my longevity and my CV and are impressed by the prodigious output, if nothing else. I used to think all the award nominations were kind of hollow because I so rarely won; which was incredibly ungracious because some writers are never nominated for anything…but it doesn’t mean their work isn’t good. Now, I just find myself grateful to make a short-list of five out of all the possibilities for that slot, you know? I’m lucky, and I’m blessed.

I’ve reflected a lot on my life and my career this past year–Mom’s death had something to do with that–and I’ve identified, in many cases, why I am the way am by remembering the event that triggered the response in my brain of “okay, never want to experience that again” which led to so many self-toxic and self-defeating behaviors. But the bottom line of it all is I’ve finally accepted myself for who I am, have determined to stop self-deprecating, and take some pride in myself and my career and my life. I know the most amazing people and have the most incredible friends. I have a day job where I make a difference in people’s lives. I have an awesome life-partner, an enviable writing career, and I get to live in New Orleans.

Not bad, right?

(It’s Going to Be a) Lonely Christmas

Merry Christmas to those who celebrate, and if you don’t–well, happy Monday off!

Yesterday was not a good day. I woke up feeling like crap, and it never really got much better until later in the day, when I realized it had started raining during the night. It rained all day, actually, and I was so tired and dragged out and felt so terrible that I didn’t put it together until late in the afternoon–oh, this is SINUS related, because of the rain–and took a Claritin-D, which made me feel somewhat better. I also slept super good and slept in, too. I did manage to get some things done yesterday too–I finished reading Buried in a Good Book (more on that later) and started reading another one. We also finished watching both Looking the series, and then watched the wrap-up film (more on that later as well). I am going to pick out my next read, spend some time with it this morning, and at some point today we are probably going to watch Saltburn. I also have to put the turkey breast in the slow cooker (pulled turkey is quite delicious) and put dishes away, but I also have tomorrow off, so am not overly concerned about getting things organized and cleaned up. I worked on the books some more and pruned some more out, and started learning how to use the microwave–which does make a difference.

Christmas is usually when I started looking back on the year, and 2023 was a bit of a rollercoaster for me (they usually are). My personal life really sucked balls this past year, but it was a very good year for me professionally. The year started with me behind on two deadlines, but I managed to get both books finally finished and turned in, once I was able to turn MWA over to my successor, which was part of the delay on the books. In late January I injured my arm, and got misdiagnosed by my primary care physician. As we rolled into Mardi Gras, Mom had a massive stroke and I drove up to Kentucky to see her one last time in hospice. She didn’t really know me, she was pretty much unresponsive unless she was in pain, and it was rough. I drove home that Sunday, and she died on Valentine’s Day, so I had to drive up to Alabama that last weekend of Mardi Gras for the funeral. Not going to lie, it was tough losing my mother, and it’s been tough all year. I have sublimated most of my grief into worry about Dad, frankly. I went up and met him in Alabama for their anniversary, and we convoyed up to Kentucky, where I stayed for a week. I met Dad at my aunt and uncle’s place in Panama City Beach in October for their birthdays. When my primary care finally recognized what was wrong with my arm (torn biceps), I got referred to a orthopedic surgeon–but I needed a specialist. I had all my teeth removed finally in September, right after Labor Day, but didn’t get my new teeth until the week before the arm surgery, so was on a soft diet for two months which sucked….and then had to go back on it after the surgery because I couldn’t really cut up food. I also got hearing aids, which was great and has helped dramatically.

I also finally realized what the core mental issue was, thanks to a conversation with Dad–when I found out she suffered from generalized anxiety disorder and the light bulb went on over my head: that is exactly what is wrong with me, and all these years what I thought was “normal” because I didn’t know any different and I just always thought I was like Mom…yeah, I am like Mom, and all these years all I’ve been doing is treating symptoms and not the root cause. In consultation with my new primary care doctor, I weaned off the old medication and started treating the anxiety and the insomnia (anxiety related) properly, and it has made such an amazing difference in my life. I think more clearly, and I can analyze myself better. I’ve also started thinking about how most of my life I’ve tried to avoid confrontation (like Mom) and whenever something has happened that hurt me…well, I’ve tried to avoid those kind of situations again. My trust issues come from the anxiety and being hurt before, and I also realized that my socialization as a child was delayed and/or stunted because of being unable to control my brain. I had undiagnosed ADD as a child, and I feel pretty sure that’s carried over to my adulthood, as well. I couldn’t focus or concentrate because I didn’t know how to shut my brain off or keep it until control. The only time I could find peace, really, was reading or writing.

Professionally, I started off the year by getting nominated for a Lefty for Best Humorous for A Streetcar Named Murder, which was a very pleasant surprise. I debated going, but the timing was bad and with all the traveling I was having to do for family stuff, I had to conserve and preserve paid time off. This was followed up by an Agatha nomination for Best Children’s/Young Adult for #shedeservedit, and this time I did go. I lost to Enola Holmes, but I also became friends with Elizabeth Bunce (we’d been nominated together for an Anthony the year before) and Frances Schoonmaker, who was an absolute delight. I was nominated for three Anthonys at Bouchercon this year–Children’s/YA again; anthology for Land of 10000 Thrills, and Best Humorous for Streetcar again. None of those nominations ended with a win, but for me the nominations alone were the real win. I never ever thought I would be shortlisted for mainstream mystery awards, and what a delightful surprise.

I did publish two novels this year–a new series debuting with Death Drop, and the ninth Scotty, Mississippi River Mischief. I also got an (undeserved) editorial credit for School of Hard Knox, along with Donna Andrews and Art Taylor, for publisher Crippen and Landru–which meant working with my dear friend Jeffrey Marks. I have a story in the book, too–“The Ditch”–which was something I’d been working on forever. I also published two more short stories, “Solace in a Dying Hour” in This Fresh Hell, and “The Rosary of Broken Promises” for Dancing in the Shadows. I’m pleased with both stories, but I also need to get more. I have any number of incomplete projects that are nagging at me that I would like to finish in the new year. SO MANY PROJECTS.

But I feel good today, and very rested. I’d intended to take today as a do-nothing day, but I will probably do stuff because I am not really wired to not do anything all day.

And on that note, I will wish you happy holidays for the moment and head into the…well, not the spice mines, but perhaps a spice resort?

Essence

And here we are, on a very hot Saturday July morning in New Orleans, feeling rested and relaxed, which is becoming the norm and I have to say I really quite like it. I think some of it has to do with the lessening of stress and anxiety with the lightening of my over-all schedule; it’s nice not being constantly busy and always feeling guilty (anxious, stressed) about the things undone when I had to call it quits for the day from sheer exhaustion…and then of course that stress/anxiety/guilt made it impossible for me to sleep. I even cut back drastically on my caffeine intake during this period–cutting back to only three cups of coffee (which is probably still too much, really) and only one 16 ounce bottle of Coke per day. It’s helped my sleep some–and I am not willing to up my caffeine intake to find out, either–but I’ve been sleeping so well the last few weeks since I recovered from the trip that I am almost not afraid talking about it will jinx it…but the streak continued again last night. I’m not sure what the difference is–probably the reduction in stress and anxiety.

Finding out that my mother suffered from anxiety was also incredibly helpful. Finally, at age sixty-one, nearly sixty-two (less than a month away), I realize that I, too, suffer from almost crippling anxiety, but never realized it because it’s just my reality, if that makes sense? Everything stems from anxiety: the self-deprecation, the not taking my work as seriously as I should as well as being dismissive of it rather than proud, the issues with public speaking–all of it stems from anxiety. But that’s because it’s always been for me, I just figured, as one would, that it was normal and everything else has the same issues because that’s all I know. The Xanax has helped somewhat with reducing my anxiety or lessening it enough for me to be functional, and now recognizing that it is an actual chemical brain condition that I’ve had most of my life has opened my eyes in many ways, and I am trying to rewire my brain to accept and understand that anxiety causes me to want to self-destruct at times. I wish I had known this about twenty years ago, even forty, but would it have made a difference?

Yesterday wasn’t a bad day, really. I woke up later than usual (same this morning, staying in bed until just past seven thirty like a lazy slattern) and feel very rested. I spent most of the day going over forms doing Quality Assurance as well as did some on-line trainings. Once the work day was over, I repaired to my easy chair with my journal and scribbled notes in it for awhile until Paul got home from the gym. We watched this week’s episodes of Minx (smart adding Elizabeth Perkins to the cast for the second season), The Crowded Room, and Hijack, and moved on to some more Awkwafina is Nora from Queens, which is rapidly becoming one of my favorite half-hour comedies of all time (the queefing episode is a non-stop laugh riot, seriously).

Today I want to spend some more time on a kitchen cleaning project, in which I am cleaning out the drawers and the cabinets in the kitchen. Things tend to accumulate around here, and there are things that get tossed in drawers that I’ll never need, have never needed, and just held on to for some reason unknown to my conscious brain. I also want to work on the kitchen rugs (which never stay in place, ever) and the floors a bit more. I need to purge more books, too, and work on the kitchen. There’s a mess now because I cleaned out some things already and now that stuff is scattered all over the kitchen and I need to either find a place for it all or toss it, I also am going to spend some more time with Megan Abbott’s Beware the Woman over my coffee and perhaps a few more Alfred Hitchcock Presents short stories before I run today’s errands: groceries, mail, library sale to drop off books, and maybe a car wash. The tire pressure light has been on in my car since I drove home from Kentucky, but the heat has been so intense I’m not sure I’ve been able to get an accurate gauge reading of the tire pressure; I’ll probably swing by the gas station before doing any errands to try equalizing the pressure again. I also want to spend some time trying to write today–whether it’s a new book project, a revision of a short story, or even a brand new short story entirely (that Malice anthology deadline is approaching), but I want to get back into writing again, flex and stretch those creative muscles that have been so dormant for so long.

I got the table of contents for another anthology that I am appearing in, School of Hard Knox, edited by the amazing Jeffrey Marks and coming from Crippen & Landau. The author of the Father Knox crime series, back from the Golden Age, had come up with a list of ten rules that should never be broken by a crime/mystery writer; we each chose a rule and wrote a story breaking it. Mine was “no supernatural events or beings”; which was kind of perfect for me. I dug out an old Alabama/Corinth County story that had been moldering in the archives for decades called “The Ditch,” which I revised and rewrote and made much stronger. I was pleased when the story was accepted, and I was even more pleased to be told that the copy editor thought my story was “powerful.” (I’ll write more about the story, and the anthology, when its release date is imminent.) I also got paid for my story “Solace in a Dying Hour,” and cannot wait to get my contributor copies of This Fresh Hell. I don’t know why I get so much satisfaction out of selling and publishing short stories; but subconsciously I think of each sale/publication as another knife into the corpse of that wretched college writing professor who told me I’d never publish. Given how revenge and “I’ll show you” will always drive me to prove someone wrong about me, I’m starting to think that professor may have been a blessing? I’ve certainly proven him wrong with over forty novels, fifty short stories, and over twenty anthologies edited, not to mention countless articles, interviews, book reviews, and essays I’ve published over the years.

Anyway, here is the TOC for School of Hard Knox:

Introduction – Jeffrey Marks
Not Another Secret Passage Story – Donna Andrews
A Matter of Trust – Frankie Y Bailey
THe Dinner Partty – Nikki Dolson
The Intruder – Martin Edwards
The Ditch – Greg Herren
Dichondra – Naomi Hirahara
Baby Trap – Toni LP Kelner
The Stolen Tent – Richie Narvaez
The Rose City Vampire: An Accidental Alchemist Short Story – Gigi Pandian
Chin Yong Yun Goes to Church – SJ Rozan
The Forlorn Penguin – Daniel Stashower
The Island Boy Detective Agency – Marcia Talley
Ordeals – Art Taylor
Knox Vomica – Peter Lovesey

Look at those names. I am so honored and thrilled to be in an anthology enabling me to share the interior with these amazing, glittering names. More on this anthology as things develop–release date, cover reveal, etc. I’m very excited to be in this book, which will be a strong contender for Best Anthology short lists next year, as well as the stories making Best Short Story shortlists. I’m particularly proud of my story, to be honest. I think my metier in writing is writing about Alabama, to be completely honest. I know I am known as a “New Orleans writer,” and to be sure, my greatest success has come from writing about New Orleans, but I feel more drawn to writing about Alabama now that I am in my sixties. I am sure some of it has to do with losing Mom–somehow, it’s like writing about Alabama keeps me connected to her in some weird, complicated and twisted logic only my brain is capable of making, but it’s true.

I’ve also decided that I am going to submit to the Nashville Bouchercon anthology, even though I am not going. The theme, being Nashville, has to do with music, and its being edited by the incomparable Brendan DuBois, who is a fantastic short story writer and has found enormous success as a co-writer with James Patterson (I also like Brendan; we served on the MWA board together and he’s really a great guy). I would love to be edited and work with Brendan, and I think the story I’m going to write for it is “The Blues Before Dawn,” a period New Orleans story from before the first world war, which I’d been thinking about turning into a Sherlock Holmes in New Orleans story. That might make it stand out from the rest, one never knows. It also could get selected out by the anonymous readers who could be homophobic–it happens, and one can never be sure if your story isn’t good enough or if its homophobia–another joy of being a gay writer of gay stories.

And on that note, I am making another cup of coffee and going to read Megan Abbott for awhile. Have a great Saturday, Constant Reader, and I am sure to be back again later.

Theft, and Wandering Around Lost

Work at home Friday!

Not that I mind going to the office, of course, but I love working at home on Fridays because I don’t have to get up early. Although that hasn’t been much of a problem this week, in all honesty; I’ve not had to force myself out of bed one morning this week, not have I dragged and been tired all morning. I’ve slept well every night this week (probably just jinxed it) which has made a significant difference. I think perhaps my theory yesterday–the release of stress and the absence of anything causing me anxiety because I finally caught up–has probably had a lot to do with why I was able to sleep so deeply and well this week. Now, hopefully this weekend I can start making progress on a deep clean of the apartment, prune out some more books, and perhaps get some other things started. I’ve kept up for those most with the daily shit I always let pile up–laundry, dishes, filing–so I won’t have to spend much time this weekend getting that shit caught up, which is kind of nice; I am not behind going into the weekend.

I really need to do something about the cabinets, to be honest, and perhaps it IS time to reorganize the counters. And maybe we can order our new refrigerator this weekend. One can but dream, I suppose. I slept late this morning, which felt great, but we’re both a little concerned about Scooter. He’s not himself these last few days, and so we are thinking about taking him into the vet to get him checked out. He also hasn’t been howly-bitchy lately, either. He gave me a rather weak attempt at a fill my bowl you cretin this morning, but it was more sad than demanding. He is about fourteen, which I’ve been thinking about lately (sorry, death of loved ones is much on my mind this year, sue me) but I was dreading having to have the conversation about “we may be losing him” this soon. Last night when I got home from work he slept in my lap briefly but then gave up and went to lay on the floor in front of the dryer in the laundry room–he always likes it in there were one of the appliances (whether dishwasher, dryer, or washer) are in operation, I think the vibrations on the floor appeal to him and soothe in some mysterious cat-fashion–but I was doing chores and not paying attention to anything, then realized oh you should play Spotify through the computer and that was when I noticed that I had my iMessages app open on the computer and Paul had texted me around three to call him. I finally did when I saw the text around eight last night, and that was when he told me his concerns about Scooter, which while it saddened me that it wasn’t just my imagination, I was also glad that I didn’t have to be the one to bring it to his attention and talk him through it. He does seem better this morning, but I think we still need to take him to the vet to be checked out. Who knows? It may not be something fatal, but something that medications can clear up. It’s just that he’s so old; we’ve had him for almost thirteen years and they said he was two when we adopted him, which would make him fifteen. He’s such a sweet thing. And no matter how many times I tell myself well if we lose him we can rescue another cat from a grim existence inside a cage , and give him a great life, but that doesn’t help all that much, really.

The trade-off for the great joy a pet can bring you is the sorrow of losing them. On the other hand, I also wouldn’t want to outlive a pet, either; stories about pets whose owners/parents died on them always break my heart. I still mourn Skittle and my childhood dog, Sandy–and Sandy crossed the Rainbow Bridge when I was nineteen, so over forty years ago.

I’m going to try to keep my sadness at bay–Mom always said worrying was just borrowing trouble–and focus so I can be productive today and not get behind on things the way I was before. And work makes for a marvelous way of escaping sorrow, when it isn’t paralyzing.

I did get started last night on the pile of dishes and some laundry last night, which I need to finish this morning, I have work at home duties to do and a couple (how lovely that sounds!) of emails to answer. I want to finish writing some more drafted blog entries that have been there in my drafts forever–or delete them, accepting the fact that I will either never write the entry or it needs to be a longer form personal essay or its no longer topical. Clean the drafts out, Gregalicious! I was also a little pleased with myself for finishing two other draft entries yesterday–one about writing Games Frat Boys Play and one about my story “Solace in a Dying Hour”–the anthology This Fresh Hell, in which it appears, dropped yesterday and you can click on the title link there to order a copy–isn’t it lovely how I try to make things easier for you, Constant Reader?–so I am making progress on that front. At one point I was trying to write entries about each and every one of my books; I got away from that when life got out of my control yet again, and it’s not a bad idea to go back to this stuff. I think I had also stopped with both Need and Timothy on deck; I am going to try to get back on track with that. Hell, the older entries about Scotty and Chanse books might even be on Livejournal, of all places. (Ye olde blog is still up and findable over there; I used to take the entries private after a few months because the blog had been plagiarized a few times; but I think the last year or so are still up.) I’ll have to check to see. But I’ve been keeping Queer and Loathing in America since December of 2004; next year I’ll reach my twentieth anniversary of blogging. (!!!)

I also worked on organizing and cleaning up electronic files, which is much more time-consuming than one might think–as much as I love being organized, that sadly doesn’t carry over to my computer files, the cloud or the back-up hard drive. Ever since I discovered I can do file-searches for when I need one, I allowed it to get completely out of control, which was an enormous mistake that I regret to this day. There’s a lot of treasure in my files somewhere–ideas, thoughts, inspirational images as well as images from history that may be of use at some point with some book or story. The problem is I keep finding more things every day that I think well this will come in handy when I write X and so it goes into the files. I hoard books, paper, and electronic files, apparently.

I also realized yesterday that the new short story collection–which now sits at over seventy-seven thousand words–was missing a published short story, which, when added to the document, will take it over eighty thousand, which to me is the bare minimum for such a collection; so I could actually go ahead and add it in and send the collection off to my publisher to see if they want it or not. I’d want it to be at least ninety thousand, though, so I’d need at least two more completed stories for it out of the files. Something to ponder.

And on that note, I am going to head into the spice mines. Have a lovely Friday, Constant Reader, and I’ll check in with you again probably later.

Highway to Hell

I realized the other night that, of all things, I take more pride in my short stories than I do in my novels. Isn’t that strange? Novels are, in theory, much more difficult to write than a short story–even at its barest minimum, a novel should be at least fifty thousand words while short stories generally cut off around a thousand. I think it’s because I still carry the scars from that asshole writing professor in college. I always struggle with short stories, and always have; I used to say that if I wrote a successful short story it was completely and entirely by accident. But writing erotica was an excellent tutorial in short story writing; in what other type of short story is “beginning, middle, end” so clearly delineated?

My first short story that got published outside of the realm of erotica was “Smalltown Boy,” which was published in 2003, I think. It’s still one of my favorite stories of my own; it’s an Alabama story and I am still very proud of it. I used to think I’d never get a short story published anywhere that wasn’t erotica, so when my stories started getting acceptances and published in non-erotica markets, it was very cool.

I like writing short stories because I can encapsulate an idea in that short form rather than writing an entire novel. I can also experiment with voice, style, theme, setting and story. I have any number of stories that don’t work but are completed; I have a lot more than were started and stalled because I didn’t know how to finish them. I think I have around a hundred short stories or so in progress; I actually counted a few years ago because someone asked and I didn’t know the answer.\

Several years ago, an Australian crime writer I’ve known for decades reached out and asked me if I would contribute a story to an anthology her publishing company was producing, The Only One in the World, which was a Sherlock Holmes collection–but the only rule was you couldn’t set the stories in London, period; I had never written anything close to a Holmes story and have never really been much of a Holmesian (I do love Laurie King’s Mary Russell series), but it was a challenge so I said yes–because for me, I love writing challenges because they push me out of my comfort zone and make me try things I might not ordinarily try. That story became “The Affair of the Purloined Rentboy” (still one of my favorite titles of all time) and it was a lot of fun to write, and I enjoyed the hell out of myself writing it…to the point I’ve considered revisiting my Holmes and Watson in 1916 New Orleans, several times.

Last year, the Sherlock editor, Narrelle Harris, reached out to me to see if I’d write something for a new anthology, The Fresh Hell, and there was a list of horror tropes we were given to chose from. Being from Louisiana, how could I not pick “haunted bayou”?

And so I started writing a story that became “Solace in a Dying Hour.”

Madeleine Chaisson opened her eyes and knew that the next time she shut them would be the last.

She cocked her head to listen. Even amongst those few (some say blessed, others cursed) who could hear them, most would describe the strange sounds they made as they danced about the dark, still waters as whistling. But Madeleine was special, different, not like the others.

She heard them clearly. She knew they weren’t whistling. They were singing.

But the sound she heard now was just the gulls over Bayou St Ferdinand shrieking as they swooped and flapped their wings looking for morsels of food. 

Dirty scavengers, she thought with a scowl. She hated the gulls; had since she was a little girl growing up in this very house.

How much gull shit had she cleaned off the dock during her long lifetime? Papa would backhand her if he saw any of the dried white splotches with black pellets on the dock when he brought the boat back in from a day shrimping out in the Gulf.

‘It rots the wood, you lazy cochon,’ he’d say in his sing-song southeast Louisiana Cajun accent while she rubbed her stinging cheek. ‘And who will have to rebuild the damned thing when it collapses? Don’t I already work hard to keep you clothed and fed?’

Even with him years in his grave, after she began wondering if that was even true, she’d still take the bucket out and scrub the gull shit from the weathered old wood.

If I were a witch like they always said, I could have snapped my fingers and cleaned it, she thought with a snort.

The new anthology debuted today, and it is available on Amazon and other sellers here in the United States; here is the link to Bookshop.org : here. This link is to the trade paper; there’s also a much more expensive hardcover edition as well if you disdain paperbacks.

“Solace in a Dying Hour” is another one of my south Louisiana stories. It took me a long while to get to the point where I was comfortable writing about Louisiana outside of New Orleans (don’t ever ask me about the colossal error in geography I made in Bourbon Street Blues…I SAID DON’T ASK!); I think my first was “Rougarou.” I also wrote and published “A Whisper from the Graveyard” since that one, and this is my third. I’ve started building a fictional world of Louisiana outside of the city over the last seven or eight years or so; it could be longer since I no longer have any sense of time anymore. I have revisited rural Louisiana in books like Need, The Orion Mask, and A Streetcar Named Murder; I have more stories and books I am going to write about my fictional rural Louisiana; I’ve also fictionalized the north shore several times already.

“Solace” is an homage of sorts to two other stories I really loved, “Do the Dead Sing?” by Stephen King and “An Unremarkable Heart” by Karin Slaughter. Both involve someone lying in bed dying, and reliving some pretty horrible things that happened over the course of their lives. I had been studying Louisiana folklore and legends for quite some time, but it was around 2017 or 2018 that I started really doing a deep dive into Louisiana history and culture. A co-worker had moved to Houma, which is deep in the bayou country, and she was doing the same. She was who suggested I write about le feu follet, the swamp lights some see. There are numerous definitions and descriptions of who and what le feu follet actually are; I decided I wanted to use the lights and the whistling aspects of their legend, and I wanted the story to focus on a woman who’s lived a very hard life and been through some things…but who could not only see le feu follet for what they actually are and appear, but could tell that they weren’t whistling, but singing. I also kind of based her on my maternal grandmother, a very quiet woman who never showed emotion and never complained about anything; things were what they were and you just dealt with them, period. I wanted to get that sense of quiet strength that you can usually only find in rural Southern women, that practical pragmatism that has gotten them through hard lives and a lot of tragedy.

My maternal grandmother was pretty amazing, really.

I am very proud of the story and how it turned out; the anthology itself is amazing, and the cover is gorgeous. I hope you enjoy it should you choose to check it out.

Oil of Angels

Here we are on a lovely Thursday morning. I managed to survive a full week in the office for the first time in three weeks (I won’t be going in on next Wednesday, either, as I have doctors’ appointments all day that day, so yet another non-full week for me, oy). I wasn’t very tired yesterday; no more than just the normal wearing down of a work week. I had slept really well Tuesday night so I wasn’t very tired yesterday, and I was also trying to get some odds and ends finished. It’s very strange where I am right now; I have some commitments but not many; and I finally seem to have the email situation almost completely under control at long last. I do sometimes find myself at loose ends on occasion; no emails to answer, nothing urgent that needs to be done, finished or worked on. It kind of feels weird, but it’s also nice in some ways. Maybe that’s why I am sleeping better? Because I’ve managed to get the stress under control somehow?

Who knows?

Paul worked late the last two nights–he’s writing a grant for the National Endowment for the Arts, so glamorous–so I was kind of at loose ends. Last night I had a ZOOM thing at six; and I was already a little worn down from the day at the office (mostly from getting up at six, really). I was falling asleep in my chair by nine, so I went to bed; I tried reading a short story by H. G. Wells in that My Favorites in Suspense Hitchcock book, but I couldn’t get focused. But I also realized something when I got home from work yesterday: I am sort of caught up on everything? Oh, sure, I still have two novels in various stages of production–waiting for the edits on one while page proofing the other–but I am actually kind of caught up right now. I had no emails to answer in my inbox. The proofing is going decently, and isn’t due to be turned in for another couple of weeks, at any rate, so I am actually ahead on that one. For the first time in years, I had absolutely nothing to do and no excuses or justifications necessary to go sit in my chair and cuddle with the cat and just empty my brain and do nothing. I cannot remember the last time this has happened; it’s been at least since 2019, I think. It’s an odd feeling, but also one I could get sort of used to, if I let myself.

Someone told me yesterday–during the ZOOM call–that I’m a workaholic, which kind of took me aback. (Kind of like being called prolific used to always make do a double take and say, what?) But as I sat there in my easy chair rewatching the LSU College World Series final game at last (GEAUX TIGERS! I also realized I never really posted about that world series and how fun it was to watch–the final game was pretty fun to watch; must have been amazing to watch as it happened), I started thinking about that some more and instead of the usual kneejerk no, I’m actually really lazy defensive reaction I always have (because, believe it or not, I really AM lazy) when someone says something like that to me, I decided to think about it and she wasn’t entirely wrong. I do have a full time job in an office. I do write full time. I edit part time. This is the first year since maybe 2009 where I am not doing any kind of official volunteer service in what little time I have left after everything else, and it’s kind of nice. It’s nice to have free time I don’t have to feel guilty about, where I don’t have to say to myself “no one else has to justify taking the weekend off from everything” when they are too tired to work on the weekends. I think she was probably right: I am a workaholic.

Oh, this is just a respite and things will start cranking up a bit again, I am well aware of that, but I want to enjoy this brief time of leisurely page proofing while I wait for my other edits with no sword of Damocles hanging over my head. I’m probably going to start writing something else relatively soon, maybe next week or the week after, depending on when the edits arrive. I want to finish strong first drafts for Muscles and Chlorine by September, when I am going to spend the rest of the year working on the requested follow up book to this other one I’m currently proofing. I also have to come up with a plot for that book, so there’s so mental gymnastics ahead of me, so letting my brain have a bit of a rest will be helpful as my batteries need to thoroughly recharge; I’ve run them down dramatically over the last few years. Mom’s decline and final illness, the pandemic, being EVP of MWA, trying to continue to write books and stories–and that’s not even taking into consideration the national political shit show this country has been for years now–it’s a wonder I managed to survive the last few years, you know? Let alone continued to write and be productive while doing my day job well, managing the household–the chores were definitely allowed to slide for a very long time, I’m afraid–no wonder I was exhausted and tired and drained all the time. No wonder writing my stories and books felt like misery and like I was doing it on autopilot.

And I need to take better care of myself, period.

Today is also the launch day (in Australia) for This Fresh Hell, edited by Katya de Becerra and Narrelle M. Harris; it features my story “Solace in a Dying Hour,” which is one that I am rather proud of, to be quite frankly. (While I was trying to read that H. G. Wells story–“The Inexperienced Ghost” was its title–it occurred to me that I am much prouder of my short stories than I am of my books, which is a weird thing I am going to have to unpack at some point) I’ll do another entry about the story, of course; maybe that will be the time and place for me to work through my weird neuroses about short stories and my writing.

Or I could see a therapist again. Which is probably the best thing, really.

And on that note, I am heading into the spice mines. Y’all have a great Thursday, okay?

Sorry

And we have cycled around once again to work-at-home Friday. Huzzah? Huzzah.

I will be taking a short break from my work-at-home duties today to interview Margot Douaihy today for S&S’ Pride Month extravaganza. Ah, the terror of not sounding stupid when interviewing someone really smart and talented. Heavy heaving sigh. I will of course post a link to it when it goes live, so you can hear how smart she is and how much I fumble in interviews. Her Scorched Grace is probably the best debut novel you’re going to read this year, and I highly recommend it. It’s not too late to get a copy, either. (You can order it https://bookshop.org/p/books/scorched-grace-a-sister-holiday-mystery-margot-douaihy/18283014?ean=9781638930242–I don’t understand why this stupid site won’t let me do short hyperlinks like it used to, but it’s fucking annoying. Anyway, buy the book. It’s terrific.)

And it’s a three day weekend! Huzzah! I am looking forward to getting some rest, getting a lot of editing and revising done, and hopefully some cleaning and reading.

I was terribly tired yesterday, the way I inevitably am on Thursdays, and really didn’t want to run errands when I got off work, but I put on my big boy pants and did it anyway. I decided my brain was too mushy to work on the book–I went ahead and read the next few chapters I’ll be editing after work today, so I did do something, at any rate–while relaxing with a purring cat in my lap after I did some chores. I had to unload the dishwasher and reload it, plus fold the clothes in the dryer before moving the load in the washer (I started this on Wednesday night but completely forgot once I was in the clutches of Vanderpump Rules), and tried to do some things to straighten up the kitchen before the energy flagged and I was forced back to the easy chair by mental and physical fatigue. There are, after all, worse things. But I can get a lot of revising done this weekend, which is terrific. It would be great if I can get the whole thing finished by next weekend, wouldn’t that be marvelous? I slept deeply and well last night, too–and managed to sleep in all the way until seven thirty, which is when I usually get to the office. I was exhausted last night when I crawled up the stairs to bed, but as Paul noted, “it’s not that you’re old, you just get up really early every morning now” which is true. Funny how I managed to go almost my entire life without having a 9 to 5 job for very long, and now my body clock is adjusting to it at this late stage of my life. My body is now used to it; I just have to retrain my brain to stop thinking in terms of losing time by going to bed earlier since I get up earlier and thus have more time during the day.

We started watching Platonic these last few nights, a new Apple Plus show starring Rose Byrne and Seth Rogan. I do like Seth Rogan and think he’s funny, and of course love Rose Byrne since her days on Damages, which I feel doesn’t get nearly enough credit for how fucking good of a show it was, and its amazing cast, led by GLENN CLOSE, who was phenomenal as Patty Hewes, super attorney and all around horrible person. Platonic is quite funny, and the chemistry between the two as platonic former best friends who come together again after Rogan’s character gets divorced (the Byrne character didn’t like the woman he married) like no time has passed. Luke McFarlane is beautiful as always as her gorgeous husband, essentially the Ricky to her Lucy. I do recommend it, it’s clever and funny and well written, and, like all Apple shows, very high production values.

I also managed to proof my short story “Solace in a Dying Hour,” forthcoming in an Australian anthology titled This Fresh Hell yesterday, as well as reviewed a book contract for signing–and emailed the corrections necessary to the contract in order for me to sign it. I also spent some time doing research for this afternoon’s interview; I’ll spend some time reviewing the research and coming up with great questions for her, or at least ones that won’t embarrass me by being too stupid and the kind of thing she’s been asked a million times. We also started watching the Hillsong documentary, which is interesting because I really don’t know much of anything about that church; but it’s a megachurch which probably means the heresy of the prosperity gospel, and yes, it’s a heresy. Jesus was not about “believe in Me and you’ll get earthly treasures”; the promise was supposed to be about a wonderful afterlife. (It always has amused and saddened me that so many people miss that Christianity isn’t about life but death and the afterlife; the point is to be the best possible person in your human life to earn a good afterlife, so yes, the prosperity gospel is heresy–“it is easier for a camel to pass through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to get into heaven”–does that ring any bells? At some point I am going to have to talk about religion and how it’s been perverted from a guide to life to so many things that it isn’t supposed to be…)

I also rewatched the first part of the Vanderpump Rules reunion in its longer, no commercials version on Peacock, and that version is by far the best of the two. It flows better, is edited better, and the extra seventeen minutes of public shaming for the Toms (Sandoval and Schwartz) was worth every second. I really need to spend some time on that blog entry about reality television I started after the wrap of the last season of Real Housewives of Beverly Hills; because those two shows are entwined; Rules was initially a spin-off of Beverly Hills, with Lisa Vanderpump going back and forth between the two shows (until she quit Housewives). So much has already been written about the Scandoval that what new or interesting thing can I find to say about it, or the layers to levels of cheating and adultery being laid out on the show by its cast? I am sure none of the players involved in this had the slightest idea how explosively this would go viral, turning the three players (Sandoval, his mistress, his enabling best friend) into pariahs. Not even Camille Grammer in her legendarily villainous first season on Beverly Hills got this kind of publicity or exposure–she did get the cover of People magazine–and of course, the legal troubles of Erica Girardi/Beverly Hills cast drama got some coverage in major papers because of the massive frauds perpetrated by her husband (and get the fuck out of here with the “she didn’t know” bullshit), but still–nothing in reality television prepared anyone, let alone Bravo, with how this affair within the cast would explode and become a worldwide fascination…while Andy Cohen and the network count their cash as the money keeps rolling in. The reunion episode got over two million viewers, which is huge for a reality show. The question is, do I finish my entry about reality shows and their appeal before the reunion episodes finish airing, or can I go ahead and do it now?

Always the question, really.

And on that note, I am going to make another cup of coffee and head into the spice mines. Have a lovely morning, Constant Reader, and I’ll be back with you again tomorrow.

You’ll See

And somehow, here we are at Thursday again. It is kind of annoying and irritating how quickly time is slipping through my fingers; but then this was a short work week because I was off on Monday. I’ve felt a bit out of sorts and off-balance this week, which I think is because of the Malice come-down plus knowing that I have to go to Alabama this weekend. It’s hard for me to focus and get settled with that journey ahead of me, and while I am not necessarily dreading it, I also know it’s going to be emotionally draining and exhausting so there’s some trepidation, to be sure. It’s also Mother’s Day the next weekend, so that’s going to probably be a bit rough (note to self: text your sister). Yay?

But in cool news, the anthology This Fresh Hell now has a release date of June and can be ordered here: https://improbablepress.com/products/this-fresh-hell

(Apologies, for some reason I can’t substitute text for links anymore. Fucking updates.)

Anyway, this anthology has my story “Solace in a Dying Hour” in it, and this is a story I am really proud of. It’s one where I went to rural Louisiana/bayou country yet again, which also meant navigating stereotypes, tropes, and clichés. I had originally intended to write a story about the grunch (a mythical creature sighted occasionally out in old New Orleans East, but I think his old stomping grounds now are neighborhoods) but in looking up information about that particular Louisiana legend I stumbled over a bunch more that I’d never heard of, and one in particular–le feu follet–really struck my fancy. These are fairy lights seen out in the swamp or along a bayou, kind of like a will-o’-the-wisp. Usually no larger than a candle flame, these lights have been said to be many things, but the definition I went with–the souls of the unshriven dead, come to claim other souls–worked for what I was trying to do, and the more I thought about it, the more the story began to come together in my mind. I think it’s a lovely piece of writing, frankly, and it really must be if I am going to say it publicly. It turned out exactly the way I wanted it to, and I had some expert editorial help from Katya de Becerra and Narrelle M. Harris (who worked with me on my Sherlock story; I really love working with Narrelle) that made it even better than I thought it could be while still remaining what I wanted the story to be; their input was invaluable. Good editors, y’all, are worth their weight in gold. As you can imagine, I am very excited about the story and the anthology.

I slept decently last night; I was again very tired when I got home. It took me an hour because of traffic–I stopped at the Rouses’s in the CBD on the way home, but was only there for fifteen minutes. I left the office at straight-up four thirty and got home after five thirty. It was the worst I’ve seen traffic in the CBD since before the pandemic. Not sure what there was about yesterday that brought horrendous pre-pandemic traffic back to New Orleans, but here we are, right? Heavy sigh. Tonight I am going to swing uptown on my way home to get the mail, so hopefully Claiborne traffic won’t be hellish tonight. And tomorrow is my work-at-homeday, before getting up Saturday and driving north. It was odd; yesterday morning on the way to work the traffic was also heavy. It’s been a hot minute, but I always used to drive here before the pandemic at off times so I never had to deal with traffic very much. I am beginning to think my working in the evenings is a thing of the past I may never see again, doomed to a life of getting up at six a.m. Monday thru Thursday for the rest of my working life. That sounds incredibly tiresome, doesn’t it? But I imagine I’ll be tired all of next week, too, and won’t get caught up on rest until the following weekend. Not loving this, for sure.

But in other weird developments, I discovered that Tuscaloosa–where I will be turning north to head to the home country–has WHATABURGER. It is almost sad how excited finding that out made me; I am definitely scheduling my trip to stop there for lunch on my way up. How cool is that? Usually when I drive north I tend to stop at Hardee’s, since we don’t have them in New Orleans and they’re basically Carl’s Jr, which I loved when I lived in California (and yes, I know the family that owns them is homophobic right-wing trash) so I always see that as a bit of a ‘treat’ for me when I go on long drives. I do love fast food hamburgers, although the old classics (McDonalds, Burger King, and Wendy’s) all are kind of disgusting to me now. Give me Whataburger, Five Guys, or Sonic. (I am starting to not like Hardee’s; the last few times it was just kind of meh)

Fascinating stuff, am I right?

What can I say? I’m a little bleary this morning, so maybe it’s best to head into the spice mines and be done with it. Talk to you tomorrow, Constant Reader!

Deeper and Deeper

Tuesday morning. I slept decently last night, which was lovely, but I did want to stay in bed rather than spring forth from under the covers wide awake and ready to face the day. I mean, I’m not worried about facing the day, but man, I’d rather be back in bed under the covers.

I did make some progress on the book yesterday; every drib and drab helps get me closer to the goal line, so I am taking that as a win-win-win for now. I wasn’t terribly tired when I got home from the office yesterday, either. We started watching The Watchful Eye last night, which is interesting and is obviously from the Only Murders in the Building school of thrillers. There’s all kinds of stuff going on in this building, mostly concerning the family who originally built the building and members of which still live there–and spy on each other and manipulate each other and yeah, it most definitely held our interest until it was time to go to bed. It’s not the greatest thing I’ve ever seen, and it does somewhat come across as a bit derivative (exclusive apartment building in Manhattan filled with rich people! Crime! Money!) but it’s entertaining enough. There seem to be several different storylines running, and trying to keep track of them before they are introduced is a bit of a challenge; apparently our main character, the new nanny, has lied and faked her resume to get the job because for some reason she needs to be in the building. She is working with her boyfriend, who also happens to be a cop, but we don’t find out what that’s about until the second episode. There also appear to be ghosts (or at least one) in the building, too–so it’s maybe kind of a cross between Only Murders in the Building and maybe Rosemary’s Baby?

Overall, yesterday was a good day, I think. I am hoping for a good week, after a bad weekend. I was a little mopey last night, not gonna lie about it, but not as bad as I was over the weekend. I also didn’t get much progress on the book done yesterday either, but what I did was good–it’s interesting how uninspired I can feel and yet still do really good work; I was thinking about this last night actually–how I have really not felt particularly inspired and how the writing itself has felt like drudgery now for going on several years, and yet I am still producing what is probably the best work of my life in this stage of it. How peculiar is that? My last four books (Royal Street Reveillon, Bury Me in Shadows, #shedeservedit, and A Streetcar Named Murder) are works that I am particularly proud of; I am sure at some point when this fucking Scotty I am currently fighting my way through is finished I’ll probably wind up proud of it too–although at the moment that is impossible to imagine or conceive. Some of the short stories I’ve done during this period are also ones of which I am inordinately proud–I am really looking forward to “Solace in a Dying Hour” seeing the light of day in the anthology This Fresh Hell. Go figure, right? I am doing my best work when I am not enjoying doing it? That sounds about like the story of my life, to be sure.

I went down an Internet wormhole over the past few days involving one of my favorite characters from history, Catherine de Medici Queen of France. I’ve always been interested in her and that particular period of French history: the dying out of the Valois branch of the ruling dynasty and the Wars of Religion that sundered France, and especially have always been interested in her Flying Squadron (l’Escadron volant); beautiful women she had trained in the art of conversation and seduction whose primary function was to bed the Queen’s enemies and spy on them, reporting back to her. I’ve always thought it would be interesting to write from the perspective of one of those women–intrigue! Suspense! Danger! Who is a Spanish spy, and who is an English spy? Who is a Huguenot and who is working for the Pope? The French court was rife with intrigue and conspiracy in that period, which would be so much fun to write about.

I still would like to write that popular history of the sixteenth century focusing on all the women who held power in that century, which I would be more than willing to go out on a limb and say was more commonplace in that century than in any other, before or since. (What can I say? When I am down and in the dumps, as I have been these past few days, Internet wormholes about periods of history that fascinate me draw me like honey draws bees) I’ve even been thinking about the introduction to it lately; it’s been in my mind. The more rabbit holes about the sixteenth century I go down the more it interests me, you know?

And on that note, I am heading into the spice mines. I hope you have a lovely Tuesday, Constant Reader, and I will check back in with you again tomorrow.