Thursday, and my last day in the office for the week, which I’m not going to cheer about but I am starting to feel it. I haven’t had a full week of work in what seems like forever, between Labor Day and the hurricane and all. This week is the reset week, when you have to get re-oriented and back into the normal flow of life. I think I’m there; I wrote again this week, and I also worked on the Scotty Bible. I didn’t write anything last night, but I typed up the notes from three volumes. Left to go are Jackson Square Jazz, Vieux Carré Voodoo, and Garden District Gothic, and I also have to go through the last two and nock pages. Then I have to organize it, as well as summarize each book and list key plot points and characters. One of the lovely things about having a lengthy backlist is you can go back and mine the old books for references and even “hmmm, could this character be interesting to bring back at this point?” Yes, I am enjoying myself, and it’s great. I ran an errand after work last night–just the mail–but I also have to stop on the way home tonight at the grocery for a small run (I am resisting the urge to splurge on jelly beans, which are my literal favorite thing right now, and I am trying to break the habit but they’re so good!!!!) and will probably take the evening off from doing anything other than chores. Paul caught up the laundry yesterday, which was a very pleasant surprise, and I am currently soaking the dishes so I can finish washing them tonight. I would love to cruise into the weekend with all of these chores already taken care of so I can lose myself in college football while correcting the manuscript so far (as well as reading it all the way through to see how repetitious and tedious it must be).
I feel good and alert this morning, which is nice, and also think I slept through the night for the first time in a while–I’ve been waking up lately in the middle of the night, but am always able to get back to sleep–and I feel rested. No telling how long that will last, of course, but–last day in the office for the week, so as long as I make it through the day–and it will be a busy one, too. That’s fine; being busy always makes the day go by faster, which is nicer than having it drag all day. We’re still catching up on appointments that were canceled last week because of the hurricane, and looking ahead to next week…well, next week isn’t quite as busy once the “oops I need to do my STI swabs” worries from Southern Decadence experiences starts to fade. Halloween, of course, is just around the corner, so we’ll have one of these periods in the two weeks following it, as well. My people are like clockwork, really.
WE got caught up on English Teacher, Bad Monkey, and Only Murders in the Building last night. There are also a lot of other shows dropping soon that look great, too; I’m interested in American Sports Story: Aaron Hernandez because that case always interested me. I’d even thought about basing a book on it, using LSU and the Saints rather than Florida and the Patriots, but I don’t know if it’s that compelling anymore, so seeing it through the eyes of a fictionalize television adaptation will help me make up my mind if it’s something I want to attempt in the future. I’d like to spend some time reading Jordan Harper’s Everyone Knows, which is wonderful, and I’d love to finish it this weekend and move on to my Halloween Horror Reading challenge for October. I want to reread an old horror favorite to prime the pump, maybe Stephen King or The Haunting of Hill House, which is overdue for a reread, or I could perhaps reread We Have Always Lived in the Castle, which I’ve not reread in a very long time. Yeah, maybe that’s what I’ll do.
There are some big college games this weekend, too. I want to wash the car this weekend and clean out the interior, which I think I might be able to do tomorrow afternoon when I finish my work-at-home duties and on the way home from picking up the mail. My messy workspace needs to be organized and cleaned this weekend, and maybe–just maybe–I’ll be able to take a box down out of the attic. I can clean all the copies of my own books out of the cabinets once there’s space for them to be stored in the attic, which will be a lovely way to free up space and reorganize the kitchen. I’d also like to get a few more chapters done before the end of the weekend and Monday rolls around again. I really do need to get into the habit of making to-do lists again…
And on that note, I am going to bring this to a close. Have a lovely Thursday, Constant Reader, and I’ll be back tomorrow morning, if not sooner; one never knows.
(NOTE: I started writing this post back in January, after I’d returned to New Orleans from my last Mystery Writers of America board meeting–this is to give context to the opening paragraph– as you are no doubt well aware, Constant Reader, that I’ve not been back to New York since January; so this is that same trip where this happened and I started thinking about these things, which have never been far out of the forefront of my mind since then.)
While I was in New York recently, walking around to and fro, here and there, hither and yon, I was always checking my phone (and yes, I hate that I’ve become one of those people) and then shoving it back into my pants pocket without putting it to sleep first or closing the app that was open. As I walked around, of course this led to my phone doing all kinds of weird things –closing an app and opening another, etc.; but at least there were no butt dials, right? At one point, when I pulled out my phone as I took a seat on the subway, somehow what was open on the screen was a google search for my book A Streetcar Named Murder–and when I went to close that screen I touched one of the images by mistake, which took me to the Goodreads page for the book. Bear in mind, I never look at Goodreads for any of my books, let alone Amazon–the temptations to start reading the bad reviews is too great, and while I can usually laugh them off, occasionally–and it depends entirely on my mood, of course–one will get under my skin and it will annoy me, and that’s not good for anyone.
This particular day on the subway the Goodreads page opened to the bad reviews first–its average is four stars, which I will always take because I am not Lauren Hough–and the very first one made me laugh out loud on the subway. Paraphrased, it was basically someone taking umbrage at “someone who doesn’t live here or know the first thing about New Orleans” writing a book about New Orleans. The reason they had come to this conclusion was because Valerie referred to Mardi Gras as “Fat Tuesday”, and according to this one-star reviewer, no one from New Orleans would ever say Fat Tuesday instead of Mardi Gras.
Well, I’ve lived here for twenty-seven years and I have heard any number of locals say Fat Tuesday rather than Mardi Gras, and so of course I had to click on the reviewer’s profile…and grinned to myself when I saw that they actually live in Metairie, not New Orleans…which to locals is a bigger crime than getting something wrong about New Orleans: claiming to be from New Orleans when you actually live in Metairie. (the rejoinder is usually along the lines of “bitch, you live in Metairie.”)
It was also kind of fun to be accused of inauthenticity when it comes to writing about New Orleans, because I personally have never claimed to be an expert on anything New Orleans (others have said that about me, and I always am very quick to reply not even close); the more I learn about the city the more I realize how little I actually know about the city. There’s an extremely rich (and often incredibly dark) history here; it’s hard for me to wrap my mind around the fact that the New Basin canal was there as long as it was, or that there were several train stations around the French Quarter (including one that essentially was in Storyville–rather convenient for the whores and pimps, right?), or that where UNO is now used to be the lake shore resort of Milneburg, or that the only way across the river or the lake was by ferry until Huey Long built a bridge at the Rigolets (the narrow inlet between lakes Pontchartrain and Borgne).
I was on a panel once at the Tennessee Williams Festival with Bill Loefhelm (if you’re not reading Bill’s books, shame on you and correct that immediately) and the question of New Orleans authenticity came up, and Bill’s response (paraphrasing) was that New Orleanians have a tendency to play a game called “NOLier than Thou,” in which they try to one-up each other to see who the true New Orleanian actually is–which is, of course, gatekeeping. (And yes, I immediately turned to him and said, “I like that and am going to steal it” SO CONSIDER IT STOLEN.)
It does bother me somewhat when I read books set in New Orleans written by people who have never lived here; you can tell, but I also get over it pretty quickly; who is to say who can and can’t write about a place? There’s a significant difference between visiting and living here, which I realized almost immediately after we moved here, and that also becomes very apparent in fiction. I had started writing the book that would become Murder in the Rue Dauphine before I moved here, and I realized, once I did live here, that everything I’d written about New Orleans was completely wrong. I didn’t work on the book for another two years; and even then I wasn’t entirely sure I’d lived here long enough to write about the city. So…I kind of cheated by making Chanse MacLeod not a native either; he’d moved to New Orleans after getting his degree in Criminology from LSU, and had been here about six or seven years when the story opened. So he was an outsider, too; so his views on the city and how things work around here were from an outsider’s perspective, like mine; that was easier. With Bourbon Street Blues, I decided that Scotty was not only a native but came from two old-line society families, from the Garden District and Uptown. One of the greatest joys of my publishing career was having the Times-Picayune’s mystery reviewer, as well as the Books Editor, both say repeatedly that I got New Orleans right in my books. (Thanks again as always for all of your support, Diana Pinckley and Susan Larson!)
And I never really worried about it too much from then on. I wrote about New Orleans as I saw it–the potholes, the cracked sidewalks, the leaning houses, flooding streets, oppressive weather and hurricanes. As the years passed, I became more and more aware that my New Orleans writing was primarily confined to the Quarter, the Marigny, the CBD, the Lower Garden District, the Garden District, and Uptown–a very narrow slice of the city, but those were also my slices of the city, so that’s I wrote about. Sometimes I’d venture into another neighborhood–Lakeview, the Irish Channel, English Turn–and sometimes the story would take the characters to another part of Louisiana–the bayou and river parishes, the Maurepas swamp, the Atchafalaya Swamp, Baton Rouge–which, oddly enough, I had no qualms about fictionalizing. I’ve created numerous fictional towns and parishes surrounding New Orleans; I’ve even invented a sleazy gay bar in the Quarter (the Brass Rail).
So, was I doing New Orleans (and Louisiana) right by making stuff up, inventing places like the Royal Aquitaine Hotel, the Brass Rail, Bodytech Health Club, Riverview Fitness, etc.? Sometimes you have to fictionalize things, even if they are based on something that really exists. I never really thought much about it; I felt like I was getting the feel of New Orleans right, that my characters talked the way people in New Orleans do and react the way people here do, and that I was putting enough reality into the books for them to ring true to locals, natives, and tourists. Sometimes the cases are based on, in or around something that actually happened or exist; like the Cabildo Fire, the Fire at the Upstairs Lounge, Hurricane Katrina and the ensuing flood; termite swarms; Huey Long’s deduct box; and even the court case in, I think, Murder in the Irish Channel that triggered the murders was actually based on a civil trial I served as a juror on.
When I started writing A Streetcar Named Murder, I realized a lot of things I was writing about had to be fictionalized; I couldn’t set a murder at a Mardi Gras krewe ball and use an actual krewe that exists in real life, for one thing (like I had to invent a French Quarter hotel for a couple of murders to occur in) and while I didn’t want to use the cheat that Valerie had moved here again, like I did with Chanse, I wanted her to be of New Orleans but not be of New Orleans…so her parents are from Georgia and moved here after college and marriage, so Valerie was born here, went to school here, met and fell in love with and married her husband here–but her roots aren’t very deep, so she is both insider and outsider at the same time. I liked that idea; like how I am of the South but not of the South, she was of New Orleans but not of New Orleans at the same time. When creating Jem Richard in Death Drop, again, he’s a recent transplant to the city but his father is from New Orleans but relocated to Dallas, where Jem was born and raised. Jem spent a lot of his summers in New Orleans when he was growing up with his paternal grandmother, so he too is of New Orleans but not of New Orleans; which I am really liking as a method of storytelling about the city. I also moved Jem to a different part of the city; he lives in the 7th ward, on St. Roch Avenue in what is known as the St. Roch neighborhood (aka what realtors are trying to redefine and rename as the “new Marigny”, in order to raise prices) which is also very close to my office. Part of this was to move the action out of the neighborhoods I usually write about (although he does wind up in both Uptown and the Quarter) and so I could explore another neighborhood/part of the city than what I usually write about.
I also had recently–prior to the pandemic–started feeling more disconnected from the city than I ever had before. Primarily I think this was due to my office moving; we had been on Frenchmen Street in the Marigny, one block from the Quarter and where Scotty lives, so whenever I needed some Scotty inspiration I could walk a block, stand under the balconies of his building and just look around, drinking in the sights and sounds and smells of the block. To get past this, I started joining New Orleans history pages on Facebook, like Ain’t Dere No Mo New Orleans or the HNOC page and various others–you do occasionally run into Confederate apologists and racists there (they usually cry about the “crime” in New Orleans–you know, the usual dog-whistles from the white flight racists who fled to Jefferson Parish or the North Shore to escape desegregation of the public schools) and reading more histories of the city, state, and region–which are incredibly fascinating. That reading/research helped me write my historical Sherlock in New Orleans short story, “The Affair of the Purloined Rentboy”–but I have also since realized I got some things wrong in the story too, but there is just so much to know. I set the story in 1916 for example….without knowing New Orleans was hit by a MAJOR hurricane in 1915 that wiped out any number of settlements and villages around the lakes and the bay shores (that will turn up in a story sometime; the destruction of the lake front village of Freniere is just begging to be fictionalized and written about). When I mentioned this to another writer, who primarily does historicals, she snorted. “It’s impossible to know everything, and would people in 1916 still be talking about a hurricane from 1915?”
Probably, but if it doesn’t have anything to do with the story being told, why would I mention it?
A very valuable lesson, to be sure.
So, yes, lady from Metairie: you caught me. I’m not from New Orleans, you’re correct. But I’ve also published over twenty novels and umpteen short stories set here, and have even won awards for doing it.
And I’ll call it Fat Tuesday if I fucking want to.
The Huey P. Long Bridge at sunset, photo credit Marco Rasi
I do, I really do. I was thinking about this the other night; I was thinking about my trip this weekend to spend time with relatives I’ve not really talked to much over the last forty or so years. Rereading Jackson Square Jazz (I finished last night) has also been revelatory. It’s a pretty good book, and rather ambitious in its scope, but there are some things I’m going to need to revise out of it–primarily words and phrases that have since become problematic. (They were always problematic, but unfortunately we weren’t as aware of these things back then as we are now.) But the purpose of the book overall in the scheme of Scotty’s growth as a person and development of his character definitely played out here, and it definitely worked, so I was rather pleased with the reread.
But it was (is?) interesting to see how I’ve changed and grown as a writer in the ensuing twenty years. I was also a little impressed at how ambitious this book was, in its scope and its story-telling; I don’t remember being that ambitious when I was writing the book. I remember where the idea came from, and how long it gestated in my head before it became Scotty #2; ironically, this was the plot I was going to use to try to write a mainstream mystery with Paige as the main character…at least, that was how I first thought of it. I will have to go back through the manuscript and start making corrections and finding the errors–with the actual finished book on the table beside me to consult for corrections and so forth–and I am also going to need to have the iPad around, so I can do searches in the other Scotty books to verify things. There were also a couple of interesting things I noted in the book as I was rereading it–I did a really good job of setting up the big twist in Mississippi River Mischief that was twenty years in the making–but there were also some things in there that I’ve not followed up on or I’m pretty sure are incorrect; the way I described the apartment on the top floor of Scotty’s building is way off; I am going to have to reread Vieux Carre Voodoo again as well and see what other continuity errors I’ve made with that building over the years. I also kind of liked Scotty’s not-totally-an-adult yet voice; he was a bit of a Peter Pan throughout his twenties, and didn’t start settling down until he was well into his thirties, which was also kind of interesting to me. This book also contains my first car chase (and my first writing about a car accident, for those who keep track of how many accidents Scotty has been in–Chanse has been in a few, too) and some of its geography was wrong; so I am going to need to clean that scene up a bit as well. I guess the best thing to do is reread the version that came out in print next, and put sticky notes in the places where I think I made mistakes in the manuscript to see if it got cleaned up in the edits.
I mean, I really tried a lot of shit in this book, and it actually worked! Good for me!
I ran errands on the way home from work yesterday (mainly so I don’t have to again today) and was a bit tired by the time I got home. I did get started on the chores before Tug decided he needed my lap, and of course, once I was in the chair and he was in my lap it was all over. I did manage to put away the dishes and do another load, as well as get started on the laundry, which I will have to finish tonight. Tomorrow is a work-at-home day, which will be nice. I do need to take the car in for an oil change and tire rotation before I leave on Saturday; whether I do that tomorrow morning or Saturday will depend on a number of things–primarily whether I hear from the dentist that my temporary plates are ready; I really would like to have those before I leave for the weekend because I’d really rather not have to remain on the soft food diet and try to figure out what to stop and eat on the way there and back.
I also picked up two books yesterday, which will come in handy for Halloween Horror Month: Elizabeth Hand’s retelling of Shirley Jackson’s The Haunting of Hill House, A Haunting on the Hill, and the Jonathan Maberry edited Weird Tales: 100 Years of Weirdness. I also got my three Anthony nominee certificates from this past Bouchercon in the mail, which was incredibly lovely and still doesn’t quite seem real to me yet. It still feels like it happened to someone else. I never got the certificates from the previous years–I didn’t know they actually made them for us–and the first time I actually picked one up was at Malice, when they gave out the ones for the Agathas (which was the first time I found out that they make these for the nominees. Just as well–I don’t have that much wall space and boy did that ever sound arrogant!) this past spring. It’s very nice to have these, too, but I am not sure where I can put them. Like I said, I don’t have much open space left on the walls of my kitchen/office. On the other hand, it may be time to mix that all up, anyway, and rehang things or replace things that have been up forever. Do I really need the glamour shots of Joan, Bette and Kate? Probably not.
And on that note, I am heading into the spice mines. Have a lovely day, Constant Reader, and I will check in with you again later.
I was, somehow, on two humor panels at this past Bouchercon. I moderated one of those panels, which was a great time and one of the best experiences I had moderating a panel because of the amazing wit and talent of my panelists, whose work I look forward to reading. I was a last minute step-in, so I didn’t have time to read their books ahead of time or prepare anything; so the entire panel was extemporaneous–which is incredibly hard for a panelist because you literally have to think on your feet–and they rose to the challenge magnificently. However, I couldn’t use those questions as a self-interview, so instead, I will share the questions marvelous Leslie Karst came up with as the fill-in moderator for the Best Humorous Mystery Anthony panel, which I got to share with Ellen Byron, Jennifer J. Chow, Raquel V. Reyes, and Catriona McPherson…and a lovely time was had by all.
(You can only imagine how thrilling it was to be nominated for an award with these oh-so-talented and wickedly witty women. The imposter syndrome was strong in me on that panel.)
But, with a strong and heartfelt thank you to Leslie for these questions, away we go.
Did you set out to write a humorous (whatever that means) book?
I don’t. That would trigger my anxiety, I think, and I’d second-guess myself constantly. I’m not really sure how funny I actually am–and it’s not self-deprecation for me to say that I don’t think I’m being–or trying to be– funny most of the time. But people always have laughed. It took me a long time for me to realize that they weren’t laughing at me, but with me.
I believe humor should come out of the characters and how they react to, and/or see things, around them. New Orleans is a very easy city to write funny about because the daily paper is an endless source of unintentional humor. Our city government is weird and crazy, as is our history. Something that would draw stares and a crowd anywhere else isn’t even blinked at here. I tried mightily to resist, but have to shamefully confess that I, too, have walked to the Walgreens on the corner in pajamas and house shoes. Are the Scotty books camp? I’ve been thinking about that a lot lately, as I have been watching and reading about the camp aesthetic in the queer community, and I think they are, based on all the definitions I’ve seen and heard and read about. Scotty exists in a very close to reality as I can make it world, but the situations he and the other characters find themselves in are often over-the-top and ridiculous but normalized in that world, much as they are in real life. No one bats at an eye at any of it, because it’s normal. I think that makes my Scotty series camp.
The book that was nominated, A Streetcar Named Murder, was one in which I didn’t even think about being funny. I had the over-the-top character of the neighbor/best friend, Lorna, for comic relief, but my main character was supposed to be the one who sees and recognizes the ridiculousness but accepts it as reality. Catriona McPherson tagged me on Facebook because one scene in the book made her laugh for several minutes–which I took as a great compliment, because she is one of the funniest people I know–but I didn’t even think about writing that scene as funny; it’s actually when Valerie discovers a dead body, and the dying woman–wearing a pirate wench costume–says her last words, trying to identify who killed her. I remember making the conscious choice as to what those last words would be and tying it into her costume, but that seemed to me how it had to be, if that makes sense? And of course, when you’re writing a book and revising and reediting and rewriting and copy editing and page proofing…you do get so heartily sick of a book and its characters that it just seems tedious and tired and dull to you. Any humor I may have deliberately thought up and wrote into a manuscript no longer is funny to me by the final pass…which is worrying. I am never sure the book is funny or not.
What’s the most challenging thing about writing humor?
Being funny! The thing that always gets me about humor is how quickly and easily it’s dismissed when it comes to books–books aren’t supposed to be funny, you know; they’re supposed to be serious–which always puts funny books at a disadvantage, especially when it comes to awards, particularly juried ones. How do you say one book is funnier than another? Do you judge just the humor, or is that just a factor in the overall quality of the book? The odds of five to seven judges all agreeing on the same thing being funny are exponentially greater than the odds of five to seven judges agreeing on something tragic. Humor is harder than tragedy, and it’s even harder when you’re trying to find the humor in a tragedy.
Humor is incredibly subjective, and difficult to agree on. I’m one of the few people who thought Seinfeld went on for too many seasons and had stopped being funny long before they stopped; likewise with any number of other highly popular comedies, from Friends to Modern Family; shows that remain consistently funny for a long run are very rare, and I’ve always appreciated the comedies that went out before the quality began to decline (The Mary Tyler Moore Show, All in the Family, The Bob Newhart Show).
Have you ever gotten the giggles in a highly inappropriate setting, and how did that go?
My grandmother’s funeral. In fairness, my eldest cousin is one of the funniest people I know, and I made the mistake of sitting next to her and she kept whispering to me and I couldn’t help it. It did NOT go over well, and we’ll leave it at that?
Have you ever had to change anything in a book (funny or not) because of pushback from your editor?
Nothing major or significant, really; there was never anything like “this scene! What were you thinking?”
Is writing humor difficult for you, or does it come naturally? Any tips on writing humor for those writers in the audience?
Like I said, I don’t really try, it just happens. So I guess I would have to say it’s easy, with the qualifier being if I am not trying to be. The Scotty books were my first experience with really writing humor, and for me, it was more about him and his reactions to all the crazy things happening around him–which is why I’ve been wondering if the books are camp or not lately. The original idea for the first one did strike me as funny; I just saw one of the dancers working at the Pub during Southern Decadence weekend maneuvering through the big crowd in the street to start his shift. I had a mental flash of a guy wearing only a day-glo lime-green thong being chased through the crowd with bad guys with guns also trying to fight their way through the enormous crowd of scantily clad partying gay men. Likewise, the original idea for Vieux Carre Voodoo came to me when I was walking through the Quarter and passed under a balcony just as they started watering their plants–so got wet. (It’s a regular hazard in the Quarter.) I then had an image flash into my head of the same thing happening to Scotty–only he was wearing a white bikini that became see-through when wet. Why would he be walking through the Quarter in a bikini? Because he’s going to ride in the Gay Easter Parade dressed as a sexy gay bunny–white bikini, cottontail, and bunny ears. There was one scene in Jackson Square Jazz where he finds a dead body, and sighs resignedly and says, “not again.” I wasn’t sure if that would get past my editor, but it did.
I think it’s easier when the humor comes organically out of the characters and the situations they’re in. I don’t write jokes, but I do imagine a scene that I think is amusing and then fit it into something I am working on, if that makes sense?
Humor is hard.
Is there any type of humor that you would deem inappropriate for your books?
No. I’m a sixty-two year old gay man who lived through the 1980s and has been doing HIV/AIDS work for the last twenty years, so my sense of humor is very dark. I’ve been told I have a very dry, caustic wit; but there’s a very fine line between dry wit and being bitchy and cruel. I don’t like to cross that line, but have.
A Streetcar Named Murder was nominated for both the Lefty and Anthony Awards for Best Humorous Mystery. It was a thrill, an enormous compliment, and a complete surprise in both cases. I’m sorry the ride had to end….
Here we are–the Best Humorous Mystery Anthony nominees and our moderator. (And why do I look at myself in this picture and hear Bianca del Rio saying “horizontal stripes are not a good look in your third trimester, sir.”)
And we have again made it to Thursday, Constant Reader. Huzzah for us! For a few days there I was wondering if we would, indeed, get this far. It’s funny; one of the things that are almost stereotype level for older people is that we all seem to think that time just flew past and the next thing we know, we’re old.
That is certainly not the case in my life.
I will be sixty-two years old this year (four more shopping months; plan ahead to beat the shopping crowds!), and sometimes it seems like I’ve been alive for well over a hundred years. My childhood was so long ago it feels like it happened to someone else and I watched the movie or read the book or something. High school? An eternity ago. So, no, I don’t feel like time flew past and my life went by too quickly or anything like that. I lived every day of my sixty-one years, and they did not pass quickly. Od sure, I’ve had time fly but it’s primarily because I wasn’t paying attention to the dates or anything, then realized oh this weekend is Easter? Where did March go? but that’s the illusion that time went quickly because I wasn’t paying attention to dates or anything like that. That is why time seems to pass by quickly–it does when you aren’t paying attention, so yes, there are times when it does happen, but overall in the scope of my life, not so much.
Last night I was very tired when I got home from work, and of course, Scooter was whining for a lap. We got caught up on The Mandalorian (I’m not really enjoying this season, to be honest.) and then tried a new animated show on HBO that was terrible and we stopped; then we watched the first episode of the new Rob Lowe show. At first, I thought it was going to be rough–it’s about the relationship of a father and son who are slightly estranged having to come together to deal with the loss of their wife/mother. At first I thought the parallels might hit too close to home, but I didn’t find myself getting upset or sad or anything; it’s actually kind of a cute little show. We watched the pilot last night, and will probably keep going with it tonight.
I also pulled together all the stuff I need to do to start rereading and revising Mississippi River Mischief, which is going to be a terribly all consuming task once started; I also have to get my tax stuff done and turned into my accountant rather quickly; I also started pulling all of that together last night as well. The house is still a mess, and we have to take Scooter in for his senior panel and I have to go to Costco this weekend as well. Tomorrow is Good Friday, which used to be a work holiday for us; now we get Juneteenth instead, which is fine with me. I’m not Catholic so Good Friday isn’t important to me; although New Orleans is very Catholic and so it’s kind of a thing here (it’s all tied to Carnival and Lent, you see; the third part of that Holy Trinity is Easter weekend). I know there are parades on Sunday–there are always parades for a holiday, although with the passing of local legend and icon Chris Owens (who sponsored and put on one of them in the Quarter), we may be a parade down this year. I wrote about Easter and New Orleans in Vieux Carré Voodoo, all those years ago, when I was tying Scotty books to holidays and events in the city (to date, I have never written a word about Jazz Fest because I don’t go). I also pulled the short stories together into one document to get an idea of how close I am to a complete collection and was stunned, startled, and delighted to see that I have about 73,000 words of This Town and Other Stories. That’s actually enough for a collection, but I’d rather it came in between 90 and 100k words. I can either write more short stories or I can finish one of the novellas; in either case, that’s very exciting for me, needless to say. (It will, of course, have to wait until some of the anthologies that some of the stories appear in are published.)
This weekend I have to make a Costco run and take Scooter in for his senior panel; I hate the thought of my kitty getting old. We’ve had Scooter now for nearly thirteen years, and he was supposedly a full grown two year old when we got him; I swear that he’s grown since we got him and not because we overfeed him. Do cats age in dog years? That would make Scooter 105! I don’t even want to think about that in terms of how little time we have left with our orange sweetheart. It’ll break Paul’s heart when he goes, and it’s not like I’ll be a barrel of laughs, either. (We’d definitely get another cat, though; maybe even a bonded pair.) I also miss having outdoor kitties come running when they hear my car pulling up outside. Tiger is still living in the carriage house, but Buddy was declining and had to finally be put down last weekend. We used to have as many as five or six strays we fed and played with; I miss that. It does,, however, make me wonder about where all the strays in the city have gone, or even the indoor/outdoor ones who come begging like they don’t have food at home.
I kind of am worrying about how miserable this summer is going to be down here. It’s already hot and humid–yesterday when I got into the car after work it felt like climbing into an oven–which means the Gulf is heating up and it’s a la nina year, which means good conditions for hurricane formation in the Atlantic. Hurray. I’m really glad, though, we have that new HVAC system, which really works in the summer.
And on that note, Constant Reader, I am going to head into the mines for spice. Have a lovely Thursday, Constant Reader, and I will talk to you again tomorrow morning.
LSU is playing New Mexico this evening (GEAUX TIGERS!) in Tiger Stadium–it should be an easy win but when it’s LSU you can never take anything for granted–and I have a lot I want to try to get done today before the games get started. I have errands to run, Costco to order for delivery; it just never ends for one Gregalicious, does it? It would appear that way.
I did feel a little tired most of the day yesterday; not sure what that was about, to be honest, but there you have it and there it is. But I also got this lovely review inPublisher’s Weekly; another industry journal I’ve not been reviewed in for quite some time now. I am getting more excited AND nervous as time ticks down to the official release date…but it’s really lovely getting all this pre-publication love from industry journals, early readers, and bloggers. I’m quite sure I don’t know how to act anymore! I’m very happy that everyone seems to be embracing the book, which I thought may be a big departure from what I usually do, but maybe it’s not? I don’t know, I’m not the best judge of my own work. It really never occurred to me that my Scotty series was technically a cozy series–despite the weed, swearing, violence and sex–but Scotty, despite being licensed, never actually had a client (the guy up on the fourth floor in Vieux Carré Voodoo does actually hire him before he is murdered) but usually, he’s just going about his day to day existence when he stumbles over a body or some kind of criminal conspiracy. But when I got home from work yesterday I puzzled over that bad bad chapter, and so this morning I am going to try to get it fixed up once and for all before diving headfirst into Chapter Four. I have some errands that must be run today–and I am going to order a Costco delivery–and I also have some cleaning around here that simply must be done; but I am hoping to avoid the allure and pull of college football as much as I can today to try to get as much done as I can on the Scotty today.
I also did the laundry once I was home, and finished clearing the dishes piled up in the sink–which even now are awaiting me to unload them from the dishwasher and put them away once and for all–and once Paul was home we settled in for Dahmer, which continues to be disturbing and hard-to-watch and almost documentary-like in style, tone, look, and story. Evan Peters and Niecy Nash should each take home Emmys for their work here; Niecy is absolutely stealing every scene she is in, and Peters looks so much like Dahmer…it’s also disturbing to watch as a gay man who went home with a lot of people he had just met for the first time. It really is a wonder there aren’t more serial killers in the gay community, and they certainly wouldn’t have much difficulty in finding potential victims thanks to the casual hook-up culture always so prevalent in gay male communities (which has always been something I want to write about; either in essay or fiction form); a sort of Looking for Mr. Goodbar sort of thing only with gay men. (I should reread that book; I haven’t in years–not since it was a thing anyway. I was thinking lately I should reread all the “thing” books from the 1970’s–Jonathan Livingston Seagull, Coma, Looking for Mr. Goodbar, Jaws, Love Story, etc.–to see how they hold up and what, if anything, they have to say or can be said about the culture and society of the time and why those books, all so disparate, were so successful and popular at the time.)
I slept wonderfully last night, which is always a delight and a plus, and my coffee is tasting rather marvelous this morning. It is most definitely hitting the spot, that’s for sure. I feel rested and good this morning, which makes it a great day for getting things done. I am also thinking about taking my car to the coin-operated self-wash while I am out and about today (reminder: check projected path for Tropical Storm Ian; the one off the Cape Verde Islands formed first and took the name Hermine), and I also want to do some cleaning around the writing. We should be able to watch the LSU game tonight, even though it is on a lesser ESPN/SEC Network sub-channel, which is annoying–but I get it; LSU-New Mexico is a “who cares?” game outside of Louisiana.
I also spent some time last night with Every Frat Boy Wants It, my first erotic novel under the name Todd Gregory, and it’s not that bad. I realized that the three “fratboy” books I wrote are of a type, really, and rereading that long-ago written story (I would swear to God it’s been almost since I bought the new car, which was 2017, so it’s been about five years or more since I wrote it in the first place) made me realize that the concordance I want to put together for Scotty needs to be a part of an even larger concordance of all my work; all the different Louisianas I’ve written about and fictionalized over the years, which is even more important now that this Scotty is going to be driven so much by action outside of New Orleans.
I also need to revisit My Cousin Rachel at some point today before tomorrow morning’s podcast taping; I don’t want to rely on my ever-decreasing memory and should at least be somewhat refreshed in my recollections of what is one of my favorite Daphne du Maurier novels, possibly even more favorite than Rebecca. Big words, I know; but while I am certainly more familiar with the text of Rebecca, having read it so many times, I’ve only read My Cousin Rachel once–and came to it within the last decade or so, on the recommendation of Megan Abbott. I’ve seen neither film adaptation, tempting as the original (starring Olivia de Havilland and marking the screen debut of a young Richard Burton) may be; simply because while I know both films are very well-regarded, it’s hard to imagine a du Maurier adaptation finer than either the Hitchcock Rebecca or Nicholas Roeg’s adaptation of Don’t Look Now; with the bar set so high on du Maurier adaptations, how could either version of My Cousin Rachel stand up to them? I recently read a new-to-me du Maurier long story or short novella called “A Border-line Case,” and like all things du Maurier, it is rather marvelously well-written and twists the knife with something obvious that was there in front of you all the time but du Maurier pulls her usual authorial sleight-of-hand that makes the reveal startling and shocking despite being right there in front of the reader the entire time.
I also had wanted to spend some time with my Donna Andrews novel Round Up the Usual Peacocks, but not sure that I’ll have the time necessary. Ah, well. And on that note, I am going to head into the spice mines. I need to brew a second cup of coffee, and there are odds and ends around here that need attention. Have a lovely Saturday, Constant Reader, and I will check in with you again either later today or tomorrow morning.
I know I’ve told this story about a hundred times, but I think it matters to the entire Scotty canon review thing that I’m doing now, and it kind of does shape the rest of the series. One afternoon when I was heading to work at the old CAN office on Frenchmen Street, I always parked on Kerlerec Street, which was one of the few places in the Marigny neighborhood that wasn’t restricted to two-hour parking and a potential ticket (I didn’t get a parking spot until I went full time). I got out of the car, locked it, and saw some people riding towards me on bicycles. I said good morning and they said good morning back and smiled and kept going. I took a few more steps before realizing that was Brad and Angelina and a couple of the kids! I smiled to myself–one of the things I love most about New Orleans is the regular celebrity sightings–and of course, they lived not far from my office at the time. As I kept walking, some thoughts started riffing in my brain: Brad is blond and not all that tall; Scotty is also blond and not all that tall. Brad and Angelina live essentially right around the corner from Scotty. What if Scotty was walking home one night and when he’s in front of their house someone takes a shot at him, mistaking him for a Brad type actor living in the Quarter? Someone is trying to kill him and since Scotty looks like him, they hire him to get to the bottom of it as well as to run interference?
I really liked the idea–Hollywood South Hustle (keeping the “H” alliteration I was going for when the book was going to be Hurricane Party Hustle)–and when I got home that night I wrote the proposal and first three chapters in a fever…spent a few days refining and polishing it, and submitted it to my Scotty publisher–and they turned it down.
Womp womp.
Around the same time, my Chanse publisher–who had yet to make an offer on the next book in the series–suddenly made an offer but gave me a two month turn around on the book. It was do-able, of course, but I thought I deserved something in return for that insane turnaround and so asked for a two book contract and more money; they were clearly desperate since they agreed to both. And I thought, Hmm, I can just turn that Scotty book into a Chanse book and thus it became Murder in the Rue Ursulines (and it wasn’t as easy as I thought it would be but that’s a story for another time).
And then one day, I was walking from the parking lot at my old office to where the Gay Easter parade was lining up (my office had a carriage and I rode) and as I walked underneath a balcony I barely avoided getting drenched (those who turn their balconies into lush gardens have to water them, after all, and the excess water has to go somewhere; it’s one of those Quarter hazards we’ve accepted) and in a flash, I thought that very thing–walking under balconies in the Quarter can be hazardous–and then imagined Scotty on his way to the Gay Easter parade to ride on his parents’ business’ float when he gets drenched by someone watering their balcony garden. And just as quickly as I had that thought, I thought of course Scotty would be dressed as a slutty Easter bunny in a white speedo and rabbit ears and tail and then it just got really funny to me. The next morning I wrote that scene, which grew into the first chapter, and since I needed to wrap up the personal story left hanging in the previous book, I ended the chapter with him seeing someone in the crowd he thought was Colin–a thought he quickly dismisses as impossible, and we were off to the races.
No live organism can continue for long to exist sanely under conditions of absolute reality; even pigeons and palmetto bugs are supposed, by some, to dream. New Orleans, not sane, stood by itself inside its levees, holding darkness within; it had stood there for almost three hundred years and might stand for three hundred more. Within, walls continued to tilt, bricks crumbled sloppily, floors were termite-chewed and doors sometimes shut; silence lay steadily against the wood and stone of New Orleans, and whoever drank there there, drank alone.
Yeah, right. People only drink alone in New Orleans by choice.
My name is Scotty Bradley, and I’m a private dick who works the mean streets of New Orleans. I right wrongs. I help the downtrodden find justice. I punish the guilty. I ferret out crime, and protect the innocent while punishing the guilty. Criminals tremble when they hear my name, and get out of town if they know what’s good for them. Dame Justice may be blind, but I see all too clearly. The helpless come to me when everyone else has failed, when hope is gone, and the night seems darkest. I’ve got a mean right hook and never back down from a fight. I drink my martinis shaken, not stirred—because I like my gin like miscreants who cross my path, bruised and a little battered. I am on a never-ending quest for truth, justice, and preserving the American way of life. I rescue dreams and bring nightmares to an end. Don’t call me a hero, because any one of you would do the same if given the chance. There is no case too small for me to handle, and there is no case so large that it is intimidating. I’ve taken down a corrupt political machine, and would gladly do it again tomorrow. I’ve found lost treasures and stared down the Russian mob. I’ve stared evil in the face until evil blinked and backed away in mortal terror. I have—
Yeah, right. And I have a bridge across the Mississippi for sale, if you’re interested.
My name is really Milton Bradley, like the board game company—my parents have a slightly twisted sense of humor. Scotty is my middle name, but it’s what everyone calls me. I really am a private eye—bonded, and licensed by the state of Louisiana. I was born and raised in New Orleans and have lived here my entire life except for two misspent years at Vanderbilt University up in Nashville. I live on Decatur Street with my partner, Frank Sobieski. We’re business partners, and life partners. We met on a case a couple of years back, and it was pretty much love at first sight. Frank is one of the most gorgeous men I’ve ever seen outside of a porn movie. He’s in his early forties, about six foot two, and when he had hair, it was blond. Now that he’s balding, he shaves it down to a little buzz. He has the most hypnotic blue eyes, a strong chin, and a scar on the right side of his face. He also started lifting weights in his twenties—and there’s not an ounce of fat on his hugely muscled, amazingly defined body.
He also has one of the most amazing butts I’ve ever laid eyes on. Woof!
Well, okay—it was lust at first sight. Love came later.
I love treasure hunts, always have, and have always wanted to write one. One of my favorite series when I was a kid (they’re still actually quite fun to read now) are the Three Investigators series; which was originally called the Alfred Hitchcock Mystery Series as he introduced each case and sometimes even referred potential clients to the boys. Many of those books were treasure hunts, and those were always my favorite books. One of their adventures, which was also a favorite, was called The Mystery of the Fiery Eye and was loosely based on Wilkie Collins’ The Moonstone, which I read as a teenager and have always remembered fondly. I decided I wanted to do an homage to both books; the treasure everyone is looking for is a stolen, notorious jewel that is very important to a south Asian religious cult, and it’s name was Kali’s Eye, because it was mounted in an enormous statue of her in a temple in a very small, remote south Asian country.
And it was stolen during the Vietnam War, and they’ve been looking for it ever since.
After Scotty gets soaked in his slutty Easter bunny attire, he swears very loudly and the person on the balcony hears him. Turns out to be an old family friend–Scotty wasn’t really paying attention to where he was; his mind was elsewhere as he walked–and gets invited up, so the friend, Doc–he was a professor at University of New Orleans when Scotty’s parents went there–can give him a towel and run his outfit through the dryer quickly. While Scotty is there, Doc gives him an old stuffed toy Scotty had left there years ago, when he was a small child. This strikes Scotty as odd, but he humors Doc and takes the stuffed bunny. When he gets to the parade, his mother is thrilled to see Mr. Bunny, so he gives it to her.
And later, when he is walking home, there are cops at Doc’s. He fell to his death from his balcony, and his apartment was ransacked. Then the new tenant on the top floor of Scotty’s building (he and Colin gave up that apartment after Colin disappeared) wants to hire Scotty and Frank to solve a mystery for him–but soon he, too, is murdered–and also turns out to not be who he had claimed to be. Are these two murders connected, and if so, how?
My absolute favorite part of the book to write was the treasure hunt itself; when Scotty and Frank realize that Doc left clues behind for Scotty to solve and find the missing jewel; which takes them on a trail from the apartment on Decatur Street uptown in the rain. That was so much fun, and of course, when I was polishing the manuscript before turning it in, I had to actually go and follow the trail I’d set out for them to make sure it was accurate and worked and was something someone could actually follow…and of course, it was pouring that day so I did it, like they did, in the pouring rain.
I dedicated the book to my friend Poppy Z. Brite, a writer I’ve long admired and whose friendship I have always cherished. He was always a big fan of the Scotty books, and his support meant the world to me. He was actually the person who convinced me–one drunken night at the House of Blues for a Banned Books Night reading–that I could indeed write another Scotty book, and the boost of confidence was just what I needed to get back to work on this series. (And the Vietnam stuff was a nod to a private joke between us.) And it was, indeed, fun to get back to work on Scotty and produce another book.
And here I am, all these years later, writing another one. Go figure.
I was a little bleary when I got up yesterday morning (my Fitbit advises me I only slept deeply for 3 hours, 48 minutes; the rest was “light sleep” and I woke up three times), but for whatever reason, I decided to start getting to work on things. I started answering emails (I am very careful with email. I refuse to let it control my life, which it easily can; so I answer emails over the weekends and in the mornings, save my responses as drafts, and send them all after lunch. I do not send emails after five pm CST; I do not read them, either. Email at one point took over my life, which made getting anything done impossible and raised my stress levels to unbelievable heights. I realized anyone who absolutely, positively needs to reach me has my cell phone number…and if I don’t trust you with my cell phone number…you don’t really need an answer right away. And guess what? The world didn’t end, I didn’t miss out on anything, and nothing became harder) while reading coverage of the LSU debacle from Saturday night (one thing I did mean to mention and didn’t yesterday; I try not to be overly critical of college athletes because they are basically kids. It’s easy to forget that when you’re watching on television, but when you see them on the sidelines with their helmets off, or while walking down Victory Hill to the stadium in their suits and ties…you see a bunch of teenagers and young men in their early twenties. They are kids—and those baby faces on those big muscular bodies is a very strange juxtaposition sometimes). I decided on the way home from Baton Rouge that while I do, indeed, love football, I really shouldn’t give up my weekends to it all fall. Now that LSU is definitely out of the running for anything, I’ll probably not watch as much football as I would if they were still in contention for anything. I’ll still watch LSU, and occasionally I may spend an afternoon watching a big game—the SEC title game, the play-offs—I am not going to spend every Saturday pretty much glued to the television all day, flipping between games all day. And I also rarely enjoy watching the Saints—I love them, they’re my guys, my team, my heart—but their games are so damned stressful it’s hard to enjoy them, and when the games is over I am always, win or lose, emotionally and physically and mentally exhausted. So, I decided it made more sense to get things done, check in on the score periodically, and not sweat it too much. (Good thing. Like LSU, the Saints led the entire game, folded like a newspaper in the fourth quarter and wound up losing.) I made groceries, filled the car’s gas tank, and before going, I started weeding shit out of my iCloud and saving it all to my back-up hard drive. I wound up freeing up over four hundred and seven gigabytes in my flash storage, and suddenly my computer was running very quickly again.
And yes, it’s my fault.* I have a gazillion pictures files, going back to digital camera days. I used to back up my hard drive and my flash drives regularly to the cloud—and those folders are enormous. I don’t probably need all of it—I was weeding through bits here and there as I moved the files over to the back-up hard drive (eventually planning on copying them up to Dropbox), and started finding all kinds of interesting things. Story fragments I’d forgotten, book ideas and anthology ideas and essays I’d started; some of these things are in very rough, first draft form—and got left behind as my addled, AHDH-like brain moved on to the next thirty or forty ideas for all of the above. I also was kind of amused to see how I often I plagiarize myself; I had a completely different idea for the book I wanted to call A Streetcar Named Murder fifteen years ago—which I can still use at some point, just have to come up with a new title. I’d forgotten that all the way through the process Need was called A Vampire’s Heart; my editor suggested changing it after I turned the book it. It was a wise choice; my title was very romance sounding and Need was hardly that. It was also interesting seeing, over the years, how many different ideas I’ve had for a gay noir set in the world of ballet (damn you, Megan Abbott!). I discovered that Murder in the Garden District actually began as Murder on the Avenue (a title I can repurpose for an idea I had last week); I found the original files for Hollywood South Hustle, the Scotty book that turned into a Chanse MacLeod, Murder in the Rue Ursulines; I found the files for the Colin book that tells us what he was doing and where he was between Mardi Gras Mambo and Vieux Carré Voodoo; I found the original Paige novel I started writing in 2004, in which an Ann Coulter-like pundit from New Orleans is murdered; I found the first three chapters of the Scotty Katrina book, Hurricane Party High, in which they don’t evacuate during a fictional hurricane, and the chapters where I rewrote it, had the, evacuate to Frank’s sister’s in rural Alabama (and we meet Frank’s nephew Taylor for the first time—and I also remembered that they belonged to some weird kind of religious cult and that Taylor was going to come to New Orleans in the future to visit during their version of rumspringa, but eventually abandoned the idea completely and never did a Scotty/Katrina book; was reminded that Dark Tide began as Mermaid Inn; that I wrote the first chapter of Timothy during the summer of 2003; and if I even tried to list all the iterations that wound up being #shedeservedit, we would be here all day (Sins of Omission, I think, was my favorite earlier title; again, a completely different book with some slight similarities…I may have to take a longer look at some of those iterations because being reminded of them all, I also remembered that I really liked all the versions).
I also found many, many nonfiction pieces I’ve written over the years—many of which I’d long since forgotten about—so maybe that essay collection won’t take quite as long to pull together as I had originally thought. Huzzah!
And I also discovered something else that I knew but had slipped out of my consciousness: that Bury Me in Shadows was called, for the first and second drafts, Bury Me in Satin—which gives off an entirely different vibe, doesn’t it? I wrote a very early version of it as a short story while in college, called it “Ruins,” but never wrote a second draft because I knew it wasn’t a short story; it needed to be a book, and one day I would write it. I was never completely comfortable with the story, to be honest; I wasn’t sure how I could write a modern novel built around a Civil War legend in rural Alabama. I absolutely didn’t want to write a fucking Lost Cause narrative—which is what this easily could have become, and people might come to it thinking it is, and are going to be very angry when they find out it is not that—but I really wasn’t sure how to tell the story…and in my mind, I thought of it as Ruins—which I freely admit is not a great title, and has been over-used.
As luck would have it, I was watching some awards show—I can’t begin to try to remember what year—and one of the nominated groups performed. I’d never heard of The Band Perry before; and the song they performed, “If I Die Young,” absolutely blew me away. (I just remembered, I kind of used the title as guidance when writing Need—always trying to remember he became undead very young) The first two lines of the chorus are this:
If I die young,
Bury me in satin
And I thought to myself, Bury Me in Satin is a perfect title for the Civil War ghost story! Melancholy and sort of romantic; I’ve always thought of hauntings as more about loss than being terrifying (you do not have to go full out jump scare, use gore or blood or violence to scare the reader, and if you doubt me, read Barbara Michaels’ Ammie Come Home), which is why I’ve always loved the Barbara Michaels novels that were ghost stories. That was the feeling I wanted to convey, that sad creepiness, and longing—I wanted a Gothic feel to the book, and I felt that line captured what I wanted perfectly. But as I wrote it, it didn’t quite feel as right as it did in that moment (I still love the song—and the video is interesting and kind of Gothic, doing a Tennyson Lady of Shalott thing), and then one day it hit me: changed ‘satin’ to ‘shadows’, and there’s your perfect title.
And so it was.
Oh dear, look at the time. Till tomorrow, Constant Reader! I am off to the spice mines! Have a lovely Monday!
*I will add the caveat to this that anything stored in the Cloud should not affect the flash storage in the actual computer and its operating system, and yes, I am prepared and more than willing to die on that hill.
Anyway, my shoulder is still sore this morning and in a little while I am going to close my browser–I like going dark on the weekends from social media and email; it makes my weekends ever so much more relaxing and I am able to get so much more done than if I have everything open on my computer. My goal is to get the Secret Project finished this weekend–there’s absolutely no reason why I shouldn’t be able to, other than laziness–as long as I don’t allow distractions to rear their ugly heads. My new milk frother–I know you’ve all been wondering about it since I mentioned it yesterday–got its first trial run this morning and it is quite marvelous. The first one was a low-cost no brand and very inexpensive; I decided to go with a more expensive one this time around and so far, it’s earning its keep.
I slept well again last night, although my shoulder is still sore from the vaccination on Thursday, but the icky feeling I experienced the rest of that day is long gone, thank the heavens. We also watched almost all of the final season of Dark last night; we only have the series finale left, and its really very good; riveting, hard to tear your eyes away from (and not just because of the subtitles; I am learning that shows with subtitles require your full attention, since listening doesn’t do any good) and I’ve also started picking up phrases and words that I recognize from studying German as a teenager. It would actually, if I have any desire to become bilingual, make sense to study German again; since I have a background in it….although I still would prefer to learn Italian.
Paul is also going into the office today to work on a grant, so I also have the house to myself today–yet another reason to turn off the Internet. I still have some cleaning to do around the house as well–and there’s always filing that needs to be done–but I am hopeful that I won’t spend the day falling into an organizational wormhole. (It happens, trust me.) And while I would like to spend some time at some point with the top drawer of my filing cabinet (having already taken on the bottom drawer last weekend) I am going to use that as the carrot for getting work done on the Secret Project this weekend–as well as reading some more of Cottonmouths. I also have to run to the post office today–some things I ordered arrived yesterday–and I also need to get gas and air up one of my car tires (it has had a slow leak ever since I bought the car, and of course my lazy ass has never done anything about it other than airing it up again); which means going out into the heat and humidity, which is so draining and soul-destroying. I’m having dinner tomorrow night with a friend in from out of town–socially distancing ourselves from each other, of course–but this will also be my first experience eating out at a restaurant since, well, since I went to New York in January for the MWA board meeting (Paul and I rarely go out to eat–generally we just get it to go on those rare occasions when I don’t cook). I know how bizarre that must seem, given we live in a city stuffed to bursting with terrific places to eat, but I genuinely like to cook and have no problem with doing so.
It really is amazing, now that I am actually thinking about it, how far off course I’ve gotten this year with everything I wanted to get done. Sure, I’ve sold some short stories (always a pleasure!) but I’ve also not gotten a lot of things done that I had wanted to get done. Bury Me in Shadows is still languishing, waiting to be completely overhauled; the Kansas book is doing much the same; and while I did make some progress on Chlorine, I am nowhere near as far along this year as I would have hoped. Granted, MWA business has taken a lot more time than I thought it would, and of course, the pandemic and all those months of being ill didn’t help matters much. We haven’t found a new gym, because we aren’t sure how long whatever gym we might join would remain open after joining; COVID-19 cases continue to rise in Louisiana and have started rising again here in Orleans Parish. I also know I shouldn’t beat myself up over this stuff because there is no right way to handle a pandemic, or any of the PTSD it brought along with it. Now that I am feeling healthy and myself again, of course, I have to play catch up with everything, but I can’t help but bemoan somewhat all the lost time from this year. I’m not getting any younger–next month I will be fifty-nine, with sixty just one short year away–and if I want to accomplish as much as I want to accomplish in what time i have left, I really need to stop wasting time.
On the other hand, there’s also the point that I should try to at the very least enjoy the time I have left on this planet. Who knows? I could get killed in a car accident today on the way to and from the postal service. Man plans, after all, and the gods laugh.
I’ve also been wondering lately about the next Scotty book–should there be another Scotty book–and have actually been thinking about going back in time and writing a book that would fit between Mardi Gras Mambo and Vieux Carre Voodoo. I’ve never done a Scotty post-Katrina book, and have only vaguely referenced that period in his life–but then I think, well, you don’t really have much memory of that time any more left in your brain anymore and you did a Chanse book set in the post-Katrina city, so why bother revisiting that with Scotty? Wasn’t the whole reason you never did one in the first place because you couldn’t figure out how to do a light, funny book set in that time period?
So, yeah, there’s that. It’s more likely that I’ll do a pandemic murder mystery with Scotty–Quarter Quarantine Quadrille has a lovely ring to it–but of course, it’s kind of hard to do such a book without knowing how the pandemic is going to end–how and when. But I did leave the Scotty personal story on a cliff-hanger, and I have to do something about that. My original, pre-pandemic thought, was to do a book based around the Hard Rock Hotel collapse (remember that? No one else seems to); after all, one of the husbands of the Grande Dames from the last book was a shyster developer, and Canal Street Canard also has a nice ring to it–and then I could always do the pandemic book right after it.
It’s a thought, anyway. I also have titles for numerous Scotty books for the years to come…but perhaps at some point it will be time to let him and the boys retire.
And on that note, I am going back into the spice mines. I’m going to read Cottonmouths until it’s time to run my errand, and then I’ll come home, shower and dive into the Secret Project. May you have a lovely, restful, peaceful Saturday, Constant Reader.
Sunday morning, and with no Saints game today I have no excuse not to get a lot done today. It’s chilly this morning and gray outside; we still have rain in the forecast but it’s calm and quiet out there right now; perhaps the calm before the storm? Ugh, such a tired cliche–but it’s fine with me.
Yesterday I got a lot of chores done–very little writing, but the chores were necessary and of course, being the Master Procrastinator that I am; I have to have a clean apartment–or at least one that’s been straightened up some–in order to have a clear conscience enough to get work done. I now have no excuses to not get everything done that I need to get done today–but we’ll see how that goes; there’s always something.
I read another Holmes story yesterday–“The Musgrave Ritual”–which I couldn’t remember the plot of, other than remembering that it was one of my favorite Holmes stories. Like “The Gloria Scott“, it’s a “let me tell you a story” story; I really don’t remember the Holmes stories being like this, of course, but it’s something to think about as I prepare to write my own pastiche. It’s a style of writing/story-telling I’m not so certain I want to try, but then again–the entire point of me writing a Holmes story is to push myself as a writer and get better overall, so perhaps…perhaps I should try it that way and see how it goes. Anyway, as I reread it, I remembered why I liked it so much; it’s a treasure hunt story, and I absolutely love treasure hunts. At least two Scotty books–Jackson Square Jazz and Vieux Carre Voodoo, are treasure hunts.
I also rewatched the original film version of Shirley Jackson’s The Haunting of Hill House, 1963’s The Haunting, directed by multiple Oscar winner Robert Wise, and starring Julie Harris as Nell. I saw this movie long before I even knew there was a book, let alone read it; my grandmother loved old black and white movies, and she especially loved crime and horror–probably where I get it from, and she also introduced me to the novels of Mary Stewart, Victoria Holt, Ellery Queen, and Erle Stanley Gardner. I was very young and the film absolutely terrified me–to this day, even remembering the scene with the door expanding and contracting unsettles me. I was, of course, quite delighted as a teenager to discover it was actually a novel (I had read Richard Matheson’s Hell House, with it’s similarities to The Haunting, year earlier and wondered if he’d gotten the idea for the book from the movie), and it quickly became one of my favorite novels of all time; in fact, I believe it was Stephen King who introduced me to the novel, because the opening paragraph was an epigram to ‘salem’s Lot. But I hadn’t watched the film in years; I’d watched the horrible 1999 remake, and of course the Netflix series loosely based on the book (I do recommend the series, it’s fantastic, once you get back the fact that it’s not a faithful adaptation but kind of fan-fiction; it didn’t even have to be Hill House for the story to work, but that’s a subject for a different blog. I do recommend it, though). Julie Harris is perfectly cast as Nell, and Claire Bloom does an excellent job as Theo. There are differences between the book and the film; why they changed Dr. Montague’s name to Dr. Markway is a mystery, and the later third of the film, after his wife arrives, is vastly different from the later third of the novel, and her character is completely changed; the young man who escorts her to Hill House is also excised from the movie. But the way the film is shot–the use of light and shadow, the up angles of the camera, and the ever-so creepy claustrophobia of the enclosed house–is absolutely terrifying, and you never see what is actually haunting the house. That was the singular brilliance of the book, and Wise kept that for his film (the execrable 1999 remake went completely over the top with CGI effects and so forth; ruining the necessary intimacy of the story). I still think of it as one of the scariest movies I’ve ever seen, and on a rewatch–the way you hear Nell’s thoughts, whispered, while Julie Harris’ eyes dart around–adds to the intimacy. I think that interior intimacy is a large factor in why the book is so fantastic, and why both book and original film work so well. The Netflix series does show the ghosts of Hill House, but it’s also done in a very subtle, unsettling way, which is why I think I liked it so much.
I also was thinking about rewatching Anthony Minghella’s film adaptation of The Talented Mr. Ripley, but decided to hold off until I finish the reread of the book–which I am still in the midst of–I want to finish it before my trip this week, because I want to take two different books with me to read.
I did finish my reread of Kirkland Revels by Victoria Holt, which was much better than I remembered, with it’s haunted monastery and ghostly monk haunting the big manor house. It’s also a terrific novel about paranoia and gaslighting; the ultimate evil scheme behind everything hinges on the heroine of the story being eventually committed to an insane asylum, and hopefully miscarrying her child, or it being born dead as a result of the confinement. Holt novels often hinged on the possibility of insanity being genetic–if the mother is insane, her child most likely will be as well–and this horror, which was probably very real in the nineteenth century, makes this book terribly unsettling. The main character, Catherine, is very strong-willed and intelligent, but she marries a man without meeting any of his family, moves into the family estate (Kirkland Revels), and then he dies in a fall from a balcony, and she returns to her father’s house; only to have to return to Kirkland Revels when she discovers she is pregnant. The combination of vulnerable and pregnant heroine being gaslit into believing she is insane was pretty unsettling to me when I originally read the novel; which is probably why it’s one of the few Holts I never took down from the shelf on a rainy afternoon and reread. Rereading it, thought, makes me appreciate the mastery apparent in Holt’s writing. She never again wrote another novel with a pregnant heroine–while some of her later novels did involve pregnancies and/or motherhood (On the Night of the Seventh Moon, The House of a Thousand Lanterns) the mystery, and the plot against the heroine, never occurred during the pregnancy. Romantic suspense, and its twin sister, domestic suspense, were a kind of “women’s noir,” in that the stories always focused on what were seen as the biggest fears for women–marrying the wrong man, danger to her child, not being able to trust your husband–were the recurring thread through all of them.
I also did manage to get some work done on the new project yesterday, which was lovely and my goal for the day. Not as much as I would like–I wouldn’t be me if I didn’t fail to achieve everything in a day that I wanted to–but enough to be satisfactory. I also came up with an idea for another Scotty, one that takes place down in the bayou–Cajun Country Cavaille–but whether I’ll write it or not remains to be seen. But I’d like to address the loss of the Louisiana wetlands at some point in print, and writing about a (probably fictional) version of Lafourche and Terrebonne parishes is probably the best way to do that; I just don’t have a murder mystery to hang the story on. My interest in the Scotty (and possible resurrection of the Chanse) series is expanding outward from New Orleans to the rest of Louisiana; I’ve come to realize that not only do I love New Orleans but I also love Louisiana, frustrating and irritating as that love can be sometimes. Louisiana is so beautiful…I also want to write about the Atchafalaya basin sometime, too, and of course let’s not forget the infamous Bayou Corne sinkhole no one talks about anymore…and of course there’s Cancer Alley along the river between Baton Rouge and New Orleans, which is also begging to be written about.
And on that note, perhaps it’s time for me to head back into the spice mines. Have a lovely Sunday, Constant Reader.
Queer and Loathing in America 