Tag: Three Pines

Paint It Black

So how is the new year going for you thus far, Constant Reader? I am on holiday for today, finishing the book hopefully this morning before the LSU game so I can watch it in peace with no worries–or so my attention won’t be divided between finishing it and watching the game. I also ordered groceries to be picked up later this afternoon as well. I made my quota again yesterday, and realized, as I moved into the living room with my journal to relax for the rest of the day, that I have written a ridiculous amount lately, and that it not only felt good but still does feel good. I don’t feel exhausted, despite all the writing and all of the other pressures, the way I usually do when I get to the end. I also feel good about the book, too–it needs some more work, but I am getting it in today with the full knowledge and expectation of necessary edits and revisions. But even as it is, it’s pretty decent, and I am pleased with it. I always put so much pressure on myself, and always doubt myself, and am always so terrified that I am not going to ever be able to get back into a writing groove and the creativity is going to dry up–or the desire to do it will go away once and for all. But I don’t think that’s reality. I think that’s more of that self-defeating self-doubt fear of success and unwillingness to feel pride neurosis I’ve really got to get past at some point before I die, and I do this to myself every time I write anything, really. Maybe it’s a part of my process, which is an absolutely terrifying thought–although that would be a great answer for the next time I’m asked about my process (which really doesn’t happen as often as one might think); “my process is to convince myself that I can no longer write, if I ever knew how really in the first place, and that the well has finally run dry and it’s all over and I am going to have to figure out something else to do with the rest of my life, and then once I’ve had an almost complete mental breakdown I will emerge yet again like a phoenix from the ashes of that meltdown and calmly sit down and blast out over thirty thousand words in slightly more than a week.”

Because that is literally how I write a book. Every. Single. Fucking. Time.

And why I squirm when asked about my process in interviews and on panels.

I slept in this morning and it felt marvelous. I feel rested and recharged, and ready to dig into the final chapter of the book as well s the epilogue. And after a few cups of coffee this morning I am going to go in. I’d love to be finished before the LSU game starts, but I think that’s at eleven and thus highly unlikely. I did do my six thousand words yesterday is just under four hours, so who knows? Maybe it is possible for me to bang out this chapter in an hour or so; one never really knows how well it’s going to go and how quickly the words will come out from my fingers flying across the keyboard; I know I used to write first drafts of short stories of about five thousand words in about two hours or so back in the day when I was younger, had more energy, and more time to think things through before sitting down to write. I often write everything out in my head before I sit down at the keyboard, so really the first draft gets written in my head, the second draft is me typing it all out and correcting things, the third draft is usually the fix the errors draft, and the fourth is the polish of language. Then comes editorial revisions and copy edits and all of that fun stuff. So, that’s my process. Sometimes I don’t even think about it before I sit down and start typing–which is the fiction-writing equivalent of spirit writing, where it just all starts coming out of me as I am typing it and I have no idea where any of it is coming from. You can see why it worries me that at some point the well will run dry? When you don’t know where the stories are coming from, it’s very easy to fear that they’ll stop coming at some point. It’s almost like magic, in a way.

We started watching Treason on Netflix last night, which was interesting. We also got caught up on Three Pines and Welcome to Chippendales (which they are really dragging out for far too long, and last night’s episode Juliette Lewis was so fucking annoying and homophobic I wanted to literally reach into the television screen and just slap the snot out of her; there’s nothing more annoying than a straight woman who doesn’t take a gay relationship seriously because it’s not, to a heteronormative, a “real” relationship; I’ve had this experience numerous times in my real life and yes, it’s a fucking anger trigger for me, as you can obviously tell) before watching Treason, which is interesting but again, it’s one of those annoying super-dad stories where Dad will put world security (or whatever) at risk for the sake of his own child. I hate those stories, so I am not entirely sure we’ll continue. It’s a clever premise (without the child-at-risk stakes) whereas a Russian spy has been helping a British MI6 agent rise through the ranks by giving him intel–the objective being to get him into a leadership position so they can coerce him into being a double-agent for them. That was interesting. The problem was some other group decides to kidnap his daughter–so of course, everything is up in the air–national security, safety of the general population, etc.–because he loves his daughter so much fuck everything else in the world because nothing else matters. I fucking hate Super-Dad stories–because in these cases Super-Dad always risks everything in the world–including, in some cases, the safety of a group of people dependent on him (this was when Stephen King’s Cell lost me; because of course everyone in the group went along with putting themselves at risk of death to help save Super-Dad’s child because that child is more important than ALL of them)…because it also paints an unrealistic picture of fathers who are present and good fathers. For me, the struggle to do what is best for the group rather than potentially sacrificing them all for the selfish goal of saving one’s own child would make a more interesting story. It also always amazes me in these stories that no one ever questions these decisions and go along with them. I know I can be a cold-hearted bitch but I am also very pragmatic. In an end-of-the-world situation like Cell, it simply doesn’t make sense for everyone to put their lives at risk for this man’s child. You have to put your own interests aside in order to be a good leader sometimes. Those are the kinds of sacrifices I’m interested in reading…the slow realization that you, a cisgender straight white man, aren’t the fucking center of the universe and must sacrifice for the benefit of all. That’s leadership.

Can you tell how sick I am of the Superdad fantasy? LOL.

I also spent some time reading A Walk on the Wild Side yesterday, which I am beginning to enjoy a bit more–the main character has finally reached New Orleans, and while some of the geography seems off–there are times when I can’t really quite figure out where they are or how they are getting around–but we’re finally getting to the part with the prostitutes and the bordello, which is really what I was reading it for (the first hundred pages are set-up for the reader to get to know the main character, Dove Linkhorn, and how he came to set out for New Orleans from Texas in the first place; which easily could have been condensed down to a couple of paragraphs, really; the book could have started with him climbing onto the freight train to escape his miserable life in Texas, and as the train rolled through the night flashbacked to all the first hundred pages which could easily be condensed to a few paragraphs/pages–but it’s mid-twentieth century straight white male MFA literary fiction, of course). I like reading about past New Orleans, and yes, reading this does make me think about writing more historical crime novels centered in New Orleans.

And on that note, I am going to open my word document and start plugging away at the finish of this. Have a lovely second day of the new year, Constant Reader, and I will check in with you either later or tomorrow.

Heart of Stone

Another new year. 2023. This year it will have been forty-five years since I graduated from high school. That feels weird to me, but it must be true. Forty-five years. Kids born the year I graduated from high school are full on having mid-life crises already. Not exactly a cheery thought to kick off a new year, though, is it?

I got my writing done yesterday and have a daunting day of more writing ahead of me. I managed to get it all done in a little less than three hours yesterday (what can I say? I was on a roll, and the book is really coming together here at the end), and I was thus able to watch some college football games yesterday, namely TCU-Michigan and Georgia-Ohio State. Both games were completely insane, but I am sure OSU fans are not happy with their unfortunate head coach. I imagine now, after two straight losses to Michigan and no national title wins, they are every more unhappy than they have been with their head coach; it’s almost like Ohio State and Michigan have switched their annual trajectories. I also spent some time reading A Walk on the Wild Side, which I am starting to appreciate more. I am not a fan of twentieth-century straight white male MFA writing, which is what this kind of is (look at me! my book will be taught in universities!) and I’ve never cared for (Hemingway comes to mind) but I’m starting to like it more. There’s a dark, noir undertone to it that I am appreciating, and now that the main character (Dove) is making his way to New Orleans now–well, it’s going to be a lot more interesting to me once the action moves here, which is the entire reason I am reading the book in the first place. We also finished off season two of Sex Lives of College Girls, whose second season didn’t live up to the first, but it was still enjoyable. Tonight we’ll probably go back to Three Pines and watch a movie; there was something Paul mentioned last night that he wants to watch but I’ve already forgotten what it was.

I felt remarkably rested and relaxed yesterday; the writing going so well had a lot to do with it, I am sure. I slept well again last night and feel rested again this morning–I really do like these lengthy weekends, and am going to miss them once they are over–so I feel confident I can bang out the word count i need to get done for today as well. Yay! So, I am going to do exactly the same thing I did yesterday; read this morning over my coffee, then take a shower and get cleaned up before diving into the next chapter I need to write.

As is my wont, I am setting goals for 2023 rather than making resolutions–and while this hasn’t been as successful for me as it should have been over the years (some goals remain the same, year after year after year), I still like goals better than resolutions. So, without further ado, here we go:

Get an agent

This has been at the top of my goals every year since i started setting goals rather than resolutions, which goes back to the beginnings of my blog, way back in December 2004. I have made running lists of potential agents to try for years, always adding someone new whenever I come across their information or someone being excited to be signed by one. Having an agent doesn’t mean a significant change to my writing or my earning potential or the possibilities of my career getting bigger, but none of those things are likely to happen without an agent: I am not getting signed to a major publisher like William Morrow or Random House unless and until I have an agent. I may never sign with one of those houses–I may never get an agent–but I also never really try, either. So, the goal isn’t necessarily to get an agent in 2023, but to at least make an effort.

Finish everything on deck

I have five novellas in some sort of progress, as well as two other books I am at least four or five chapters deep into. I want to finish all of these projects in 2023 and get them out of my working files. I don’t think I will ever finish every short story or essay I’ve begun over the years, but getting some sort of completion here would be really nice. I would love nothing more than to have a working first draft of both Muscles and Chlorine by the midpoint of 2023. I also would like to pull together a second short story collection, which would be incredibly cool (This Town and Other Stories). It would also be nice to get those novellas completed. It is very tempting to turn them all into novels–a couple of them might be able to be stretched out that way–but I know some of them simply do not have the depth or story potential to play out that way. The nice thing about novellas is the length is up to you; I know these stories are all too long to pare down to something readable and enjoyable for six thousand words or less; but some of them need to be longer than the twenty thousand words I was shooting for.

More short stories sent out on submission.

I really do need to finish some of these other short stories I have in progress to try to get them out on submission. I have over eighty stories in some sort of progress, with still others yet to be started and/or finished. I’ve not been doing so great with the short stories as I would have liked over the last few years. I have some really good ones to work on–there’s one I fear that’s going to end up being longer than a short story, because there’s more to the story than can fit in the confines of six thousand words or less, but then you also never know.

Clean like we are moving.

I really need to get rid of things that have accumulated over the sixteen or so years we’ve been living in this apartment. I need to clean out the storage attic and the storage unit; donate a shit ton of books to the library sale, and just in general rid the apartment of all this clutter that seems to be weighing us down and closing in on us. Part of this is my inability to rid myself of books once I’ve read them, but I’ve also become much more ruthless when it comes to pruning them–I still can’t believe I donated so many of my old Stephen King first edition hardcovers, and my Anne Rice first editions as well, but they were just collecting dust in boxes so what use were they? Paul and I set this goal–clean like we’re moving, which in other words means would you move this or trash this? The first few times I pared down the books it literally was painful, but I am getting better. And after being a lifelong book hoarder, well. you can’t just turn that off after decades of doing it.

Volunteer less of my time.

All due respect, I’ve done my time. I have volunteered relentlessly for the overall betterment of the writing community–whether it’s the mystery community or the queer writing community–for quite some time now. I write stories for free for charity anthologies all the time. I step up and judge awards because I think they’re important. I’ve served on the Mystery Writers of America and Bouchercon boards. But now that I’m older, I need to scale back. I don’t have either the time or the prodigious energy that I used to have, and while I’ve enjoyed all the volunteer work, something has to give. I just can’t do all the things that I used to do because things have changed: my day job takes more out of me physically, emotionally, and intellectually than it ever has before (the switch to working early mornings didn’t help); I tire out much earlier than I used to since my COVID situation last July and I can’t write or be productive or even read when I am bone-tired exhausted the way I am when I get home from work some nights. This also includes giving blurbs, I am sad to say; blurbing means reading the entire book, and I just don’t really have the time or mind-space to do much of that anymore; same with judging. I want my reading to be for pleasure or education for the rest of my life. This doesn’t mean I’ll always say no when asked, just that I am going to be more discriminatory. I need to be more jealous of my free time, and I can honestly say few people in the mystery community have done more volunteer work than me. I’d just like to start getting paid for working.

Take better care of myself.

The one-two punch of getting older and having COVID last summer has brought home very clearly to me that I need to take better care of myself and that physical things are just going to get harder. It’s been incredibly difficult over the last few years getting into a gym/workout routine with everything else I had to do plus the exhaustion thing; but the truth is physically I need to start working my body more–and the longer I go, the weaker my body gets and the harder it will be to get back into decent physical condition again. I also need to start paying more attention to my diet now than I am in my early soon to be mid-sixties–my diet needs to be healthier and I need to eat better. I weighed myself last week at the office and I am back up to 218; which is better than 220, but I had gotten myself down to nearly 200 at one point and I’d like to get back there. I don’t like this extra weight on me, and sure, maybe I can carry it and it would surprise people to know how much I actually do weigh, but I’m aware of it. And while it would be easy to think who cares, you’re almost sixty, you’re practically in the grave so why start depriving yourself of things you love at this age? But there’s a defeatist mentality there, a laziness speaking that is far too easy for me to go ahead and give into, and I don’t think that’s perhaps the wisest decision to make? I also need to get some more work on my mouth done–I’m tired of looking like an inbred hillbilly.

Read more.

It’s incredibly easy to come home and collapse into my easy chair and flip on Youtube videos–whether its football highlights, lists, music or military or European history, or reaction videos–it’s easy to just mindlessly lay there in the chair while watching endless videos, one after the other, about whatever subject catches my fancy. But I could read instead–and there’s plenty of nonfiction lying around the apartment. Over the past few days I’ve been reading either Bad Gays or Lost Heirs of the Medieval Crown by J. F. Andrews–about heirs to thrones that got supplanted by people with more spurious claims in the Middle Ages–or Holy Wars by Gary L. Rashba (about crusades and ancient wars in the Holy Land, going back to Biblical times); and there are plenty of other non-fiction books lying around here that I could get to more quickly if I read rather than watched Youtube videos. But at the same time, when I am exhausted, it’s almost therapeutic. I guess we’ll see how it goes, but I don’t think it’s a bad thing to try to read history or other nonfiction while trying to rest, relax and decompress from a day in clinic.

Be more assertive and less self-deprecating.

In general, this is a good idea. I need to break the conditioning I was raised with, in which you never praise yourself and simply wait for others to notice and do it for you. No, this just doesn’t work and it’s not a good trait for a writer to have. I need to stand up for myself, my work, and my career because let’s face it, nobody else is going to do it for me.

New years can be daunting as they are not only full of potential for either good or bad but they are unknown. You can’t know what’s coming, so all you can do is be hopeful things will always work out in the end. I want to also try to be more positive, and try to enjoy the good things without fear of the inevitable bad things that will inevitably come along. I also need to get out of the mindset that enjoying good things that happen will trigger bad things to happen as punishment; I need to learn to navigate that line between self-confidence and arrogance, which isn’t an easy task.

And on that note, I am going to go read for a little while before i dive into today’s writing. Happy New Year, Constant Reader!

Chestnuts Roasting On An Open Fire

Winter is here, and not the usual New Orleans winter, either. The floor here in the Lost Apartment is very, very cold; and the kitchen of course feels colder than the living room (it used to be the back porch at one time before being enclosed into a kitchen/laundry room. I didn’t sleep very well on Wednesday night, and started flagging at the office yesterday in the late afternoon. The cold didn’t help–but at least it was still pleasant. I had forgotten a few things at Rouses on Wednesday night, and while I was considering not leaving the house today, I decided it was a better idea to order things to be picked up today rather than stop on my way home when I was already tired. Work on the book was a bit of a slog yesterday–which is not a good thing at all–but I got some of the work done, and hope to get more done today. It’s a holiday, so I don’t have to do any dayjob stuff, which is lovely–I also have Monday off, which is also lovely. It’s twenty-six degrees here right now (just checked) but the sun is out and it doesn’t look terribly windy or anything out there. I was terribly tired when I got home from work yesterday–as the day went on I flagged even more. When Paul got home we watched some more Three Pines. I am not really sure if I am sold on the show or not; it’s solidly done, the acting is good and the writing is okay, but there just seems to be something missing for me. I don’t know what it is, but it’s just not hitting me the way I think it should. And ordering the groceries for today was smart–turns out Paul needs to run an errand today anyway, so there I go–I was going to have to leave the house anyway so stopping on the way home wouldn’t have made any difference as to me not leaving the house today.

I slept marvelously last night, though. Scooter woke me up this morning at five thirty-ish, hungry–he doesn’t care about what day it is–but I went back to bed and was able to sleep nicely for another few hours, which was marvelous, really. I felt very rested this morning, and like I might be able to power through all the writing I need to do today. The groceries aren’t scheduled for pick-up until around one, so I figure I can get a lot done this morning while I swill my coffee. There’s a load of laundry in the dryer and a load in the dishwasher, so yay for that chore, and I usually launder the bed linens on Fridays, so I could get a jump start on that as well. Yay for ambition!

And ugh, just looking around the kitchen–yes, I should spend some time this morning cleaning up in here. Yikes. I’ve really become a slipshod housekeeper. Maybe in the spring I could take a week off from work and just work on projects around the house. Hmmm. That’s actually not a bad idea. I’m not going to be traveling much in the future–I was thinking about it yesterday, as reports of delays and cancelled flights kept popping up everywhere and friends who actually were traveling were posting complaints about delayed flights and lost luggage and delays and I was like, ugh, I’ve really begun to hate traveling. I like being there once I get there, but I hate the process. I traveled a lot this past year, I guess to make up for the pandemic years where I went nowhere other than Kentucky? But the whole airport/airplane/other passengers process, parking at the airport and getting a cab on arrival, etc…I am getting to the point where just thinking about it makes my blood pressure rise and my head hurt and my anxiety to climb. I am going to New York in a few weeks (note to self: book airport shuttle service for LaGuardia), and after that I am probably not going to travel again other than Bouchercon in the late summer/fall, in San Diego. I’ll probably also have to go to Kentucky at some point as well. Heavy heaving sigh.

I don’t know about anyone else, but I am looking forward to these peaceful four days. It’s weird, isn’t it, how it simply being a holiday somehow makes a difference? I’m not precisely sure why that is, but somehow it has. I think it’s knowing that even if I wanted to go run an errand or something I wouldn’t be able to? I don’t know, maybe it’s one of the many quirks in my brain, but there you have it.

It’s funny, when I pulled up the draft for today’s post and saw the picture I’d selected already for it (I do that in advance) I realized it’s really a perfect illustration for my story “The Snow Globe.”

I mean, if you’ve read it you’d know what I mean. If you want to read it and buy the anthology it’s from, you can buy it here, and wouldn’t it make a great Twelfth Night gift for someone you love?

And as a little Christmas gift, here’s the story’s opening yet again.

Santa, Dylan thought, certainly has a great six-pack.

He smiled as he leaned against the bar, watching the so-called Santa with a slight smile. He definitely wasn’t your average department store Santa, that was for sure.

The guy’s body was thickly muscled and perfectly proportioned. His biceps and shoulders were thick, every muscle cord and fiber etched and carved beneath his smooth, tanned skin. The cleavage his big chest was deep, his nipples like purplish quarters. It didn’t seem possible for his waist to be so small, and the crevices between his abdominal muscles were deep enough for a finger to fit between up to the first knuckle. His legs were powerful and strong, ropy bulging veins pushing against the silky skin.

Like a traditional Santa, his face was hidden behind the obligatory long white wig and the thick white beard and mustache—but that was his only bow to tradition. Rather than a red suit with white trim and a big black belt, he simply wore a tiny bikini of crushed red velvet with glittery red sequins trimmed around the waist and legs with green faux fur.  Large brass rings exposing pale skin connected the front to the back. His red boots sparkled with red sequins and glitter, trimmed at the top with green velvet. Slung over his right shoulder was a red velvet bag, also trimmed with green faux fur. Every movement he made as he talked to a group of young twinks with poofy hair and obscenely slim hips caused muscles to bulge and flex somewhere.

Dylan knew he was staring but didn’t care.

Let It Snow! Let It Snow! Let It Snow!

Today’s title is meant to be ironic, of course; I despise snow. It’s pretty to look at, sure, but everything else? Snow can fuck all the way off. I hate almost everything about it. Sure, while the novelty is entertaining at first, I tire of it very quickly. I turned on the heat this morning when I got up–I slept well again last night, which was lovely–because it’s in the fifties this morning. I saw a long-range forecast for the weather on Christmas weekend–next weekend, actually–and it may get down into the twenties next weekend here. AIEEEE!!! That cold means it could actually snow here for Christmas, which is interesting.

I really need to write a book for Scotty where it snows here. The way New Orleans reacts to snow is kind of entertaining and a little annoying; everyone is terrified of it, and given how badly everyone drive here when it rains–you get the picture. The entire city basically shuts down because people are afraid to drive in snow. I know it’s unkind to not be more sensitive on that score–the majority of people here rarely, if ever, have driven in snow, while I grew up with it and learned how to drive in it because I didn’t have a choice; Kansas didn’t shut down when it snowed and the roads were covered in ice, and of course I lived in Minneapolis for a winter. If Minnesota shut down because of snow, everyone would be housebound for five to six months a year.

It’s been a long and awful week; let’s face it, December has sucked almost from day one. Seriously. I mean, I thought November was bad, but Christ. Last night I was exhausted–we watched the two new episodes of Three Pines, but I kept dozing off–not because of the show, but because I was tired. We found a perfect refrigerator–everything we want, at a price we can afford, but of course it’s two inches too tall to fit under our fucking cabinets, so the search goes on. But it was also a brand I didn’t recognize, so maybe we can find one that will fit from that brand somewhere else? One can hope. I really want one with the freezer on the bottom, to be honest, because I hate having to bend down all the time and the older I get the more difficult that gets. I imagine that’s going to also continue to be the case going forward; it’s not going to get easier to bend down the older I get. Here’s hoping, you know? Paul thinks we might be able to have that particular section of the cabinets taken down–it’s not like we can use them for anything because I need a ladder to be able to reach them–but I don’t know if that’s possible, or what kind of mess that would leave behind. Heavy sigh. But we’re on the road to getting it replaced, which is a start. Yay! It’s never really been the same since that hurricane evacuation in 2008, whichever one that was during the Republican National Convention. So, about fourteen years? I mean it still functions, but the door doesn’t always seal closed when I shut it–you have to make sure–and now we’re getting condensation all over the roof of the refrigerator compartment; it’s been doing that since Ike last year once the power was restored. I’ve tried everything to make it stop, but nothing ever seems to work, which totally sucks.

But it’s Saturday, and while it is kind of grayish outside, I am looking forward to a highly productive and effective weekend of work. I’m still concerned about the book, of course–when am I not worried about a book I’ve written or am writing–but it seems to be shaping up nicely. Naturally, this is always a concern for me particularly with a book in progress; you never know how it’s going to turn out or if it’s going to turn out the way you’d hoped or planned. I think part of the issue I am having this time around is that i am dealing with a subject that could be sensitive if handled badly–meaning that I’m afraid of it in some ways and that could explain why this book is turning out to be so hard for me to write. But I don’t ever want to write anything that’s easy; I want to be challenged by my work and if my work challenges me, then it is pushing me as writer to delve deeply into subjects that make me uncomfortable–and this book is definitely making me uncomfortable. So, that’s a very good thing.

I also feel rested this morning, which is kind of nice. The length of my to-do list isn’t as daunting or defeating as it usually is when I look at it in the morning, so here’s hoping that I can tear my way through that to-do list or at least as much of it as possible today and tomorrow.

And on that note, my messy kitchen is calling me, so I am heading off to the spice mines. Hope you have a lovely weekend wherever you are, Constant Reader.

Rockin’ Around the Christmas Tree

Monday morning and back to the office with me! It was a pretty good weekend, overall; I got some work done on the book, made groceries, did all kinds of chores, finished reading my Wanda Morris book and started reading another, and somehow managed to get some rest around all of that as well. I was very pleased with the work I did on the book, and who knows? Maybe I’ll even somehow manage to get it turned in by the extended deadline. #madness

And now it’s Monday morning, and I am up earlier than I need to be. I really need to focus, as a lot of things have been slipping lately as I focus on the book and getting it finished, and there’s been a kind of malaise–the feeling that usually comes along when I’ve actually finished a book, and has never before come while I was writing one. These last few years haven’t been easy for writing, to be honest, and yet–I’ve also produced some of my best work somehow during this time. I think Bury Me in Shadows is one of my best works, and while I don’t think it’s as good, #shedeservedit was also one I was terribly pleased with. And all I’ve seen anywhere for A Streetcar Named Murder has been highly positive. Land of 10000 Thrills was also one of the better anthologies I’ve done, and some of the short stories I’ve been doing during these last few years have also been really good. I also think that some of the stuff I have in progress–“Never Kiss a Stranger,” “Festival of the Redeemer,” Chlorine, Muscles, etc.–are also really good stuff. Some of the work I did this weekend is pretty damned good. I don’t think I’ve ever felt this confident in my writing before in my entire life, to be honest, but as long as I keep confidence from bleeding over into ego, I should be okay.

We watched all four episodes of Three Pines last night, and i think it’s very well done. Alfred Molina is perfect as Inspector Gamache, and while I must confess to only have read the first Louise Penny novel, Still Life, I was very impressed with it and liked it a lot (not sure why I’ve not gone back and read more of them; I do have the first three or four, but it probably has more to do with time and the massive TBR pile than anything else). I thought the show didn’t have the same feel as the books, in some ways, but it’s also a different medium and there are always changes. When I was reading the book (and again, only the first in the series so I am hardly an expert on Penny’s writing or her series) I like the town, and enjoyed my visit there. It was a nice, quirky, small town–but translating that to the screen is an entirely different ball of wax. I think the producers and writers decided that because the show is about murder, it needed to be a little darker, and Three Pines comes across as a small town full of eccentrics in the show, more like Twin Peaks, Picket Fences, and Northern Exposure than Penny’s creation….but I think it was a smart direction to go with the show. Penny’s strength is offsetting the charm of the town against the darkness of the crimes committed there, and I don’t know how well Penny’s vision could have translated to the screen any better. We both really liked it. We also watched a true crime documentary about Charlie Cullen, the killer nurse–which was creepy as fuck.

I’m hoping against hope that this good feeling will last all week. I’m going to have to stop and make groceries on the way home from the office–heavy sigh–but no need to swing around uptown for the mail until tomorrow. I have to remember to buy a shipping envelope to mail a copy of Streetcar to the winner of the drawing from Mystery Lovers’ Kitchen–I should add that to my to-do list…which I need to make a new copy of it. The problem is I don’t remember everything I am supposed to be doing, and I need to get back into the habit of making a new list every weekend so things don’t get lost.

I also spent some more time with Nelson Algren’s (I was spelling it wrong in the last blog) bleak A Walk on the Wild Side, which I am enjoying but isn’t precisely a quick read by any chance. It reminds vaguely of another novel set in the same time period, A Garden of Sand by Earl Thompson, which I’ve started any number of times but have never managed to get very far into because it is also not an easy read. I am going to try to devote an hour to reading every night–an hour a day is far better than what I’ve been doing, which hasn’t been helping to budge the TBR pile at all–and I think tonight we are going to finally start watching Wednesday. I’ve been reluctant to jump into it, despite the great reviews, because the Christina Ricci version from the 90’s films was, at least for me, definitive. But we keep hearing good things about the show as well as Jenna Ortega’s performance in the lead, so I think tonight will be the night we take the plunge.

It rained all day yesterday–it was even raining when I went to pick up the groceries–and it seems a bit gray outside this morning as well. I have a lot of emails to write and a lot of emails to answer and all kinds of stuff to do today–one of the reasons I got up an hour earlier than I needed to this morning–so I am trying to be proactive and not laze in bed the way I usually do on the mornings when I don’t have to get up at six. I am getting used to getting up early for the first time ever in my life, and quite frankly, I don’t like it. But I also don’t see the clinic hours being changed any time soon, either; I fear my afternoon/early evening shifts are a thing of the remote past now.

And on that note, I have quite a bit to do today, so it’s perhaps best that I make another cup of coffee, some toast, and dive right in. Have a lovely Monday, Constant Reader.