Tag: Welcome to Chippendales

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.

Tell Me

Friday and a work-at-home day, except for the morning department meeting I have to attend in person, which means I didn’t get to just roll out of bed, wash my face, brush my teeth, throw on some sweats, and get a cup of coffee just before nine…no, I have to be there at nine. I’ll run a couple of errands on my way home, which spares me from having to leave the house on Saturday; I may order groceries for pick-up on Sunday, but I don’t need to decide that right now.

This week wore me down and wore me out. I didn’t sleep terrific all week long to begin with, then of course it was one thing after another to have to deal with. But it’s Friday and I am relatively unscathed, methinks; I slept really well last night and think that could again be the case tonight. I was completely worn out when I got home from work last night, so I collapsed into my easy chair and watched a lengthy James Somerton video on Youtube called “What Ever Happened to Good Taste?”, which was about camp classic films, beginning with All About Eve before cycling through Whatever Happened to Baby Jane?, Mommie Dearest, and the drag queen road movies of the early 90s, The Adventures of Priscilla Queen of the Desert and To Wong Foo, Thanks For Everything, Julie Newmar. (I must confess to being enormously disappointed that Showgirls didn’t make the documentary; it is, after all, an all-time classic.) Paul got home shortly after I finished watching (it was two hours long) and we watched another episode of Welcome to Chippendales, which could have been just a movie and not a series I think; there’s a lot of padding out of the story to stretch it out into a mini-series. I have a lot to do this weekend; one of my tasks for today is of course a to-do list for the weekend. I need to get caught up on the book, I need to get caught up on a lot of things, and I want to finish reading Wanda Morris’ marvelous latest work. Perhaps after I get home from the meeting at the office this morning and get through my work-at-home chores today, I can spend some time with Wanda’s book and finish it. I am going to run some errands on my way home from work today, too–hoping that I won’t have to leave the house much this weekend so I can get things done.

My arm continues to get better every day, so I think it is something that didn’t necessarily require the emergency room costs or a forced-onto-the-schedule doctor’s appointment. It means I won’t be able to start back to the gym this weekend as I’d planned–I like to start going again before the new year when everyone’s resolutions crowd the place to within an inch of its life come January–but I cannot lift weights with this arm, which pretty much eliminates every upper body exercise. I could, I suppose, go a couple of times a week and simply focus on legs–but the weight plates would be a problem, too, you see. So, that’s going to have to go back on hold until my arm feels better.

I was very surprised and pleased yesterday to see that a couple of Instagram users did “reels” talking about A Streetcar Named Murder, and I have to confess this week–shitty as it was personally–has been a really terrific week for me professionally. It certainly was a good one for my writer’s ego, for sure. The outpouring of support and appreciation for my book from the cozy reading and writing community has been quite nice, rather unexpected, and I am enormously appreciative and grateful for it all. In some ways, it’s kind of validating; over the past few months I’ve really come to understand that I have an enormous chip on my shoulder when it comes to my own writing, and have tried unpacking that a bit. (I’ve spent quite a bit of time since turning sixty in the wake of a global pandemic unpacking my behaviors and the events that occurred that shaped those behaviors.) How different would my life have been had I gotten support and encouragement when I was younger? Had people taken my ambitions and desire to write seriously rather than dismissively? I honestly don’t know, can never know, will never know–the great pleasure of human life is you can never do anything more than speculate about how differently a shift in something, even a very small minor one, can alter the course of a life and a career.

The other night, before my Murder by the Book event with the marvelous John McDougall and my very dear Ellen Byron, John asked me “Now that I’ve read your book, Greg, I have to ask–why did it take you so long to write a cozy? Why haven’t you been doing this all along?” and my answer was “I really don’t know.” It absolutely gave me pause, and has lived rent-free in my brain ever since Tuesday. Why did it take me so long to write a cozy? I still don’t have an answer that makes any kind of sense. Let me see, I’ve always read them, always appreciated them, and have always done my best to fight the stigma attached to them by some elitists who need to feel better about themselves by looking down on a subset of other writers. I hate that, particularly because I know how it feels to not be taken seriously or be respected by your peers (there’s that enormous chip on my shoulder again).

But despite all the difficulties encountered during the time of its writing, I really enjoyed writing A Streetcar Named Murder. Sure, it was hard, and sure, I had to make myself do it (like always), but when I finally held the finished copies in my hands, I was incredibly proud of it. I have always said that I want to always be challenged by what I am writing, that I don’t ever want to fall into a familiar pattern of writing that feels like painting by the numbers (which is why I ended the Chanse series), which is incredibly easy to do. Writing a cozy presented me with a challenge, and yes, it was hard and yes, it was outside of my comfort zone. But I created likable, believable characters and an interesting story, with new situations and paradigm/life shifts that all played out throughout the course of the story. Now that it’s out in the world, it is an interesting question as to why I never tried to write one before, or even why I believed that I couldn’t write one in the first place.

And in some ways, it’s almost like starting my career over again. I am finding a new audience. I didn’t center queer characters and stories. I just wrote about New Orleans again but from an entirely different perspective, and it was enjoyable.

And I am proud of the book, and of myself. It feels weird to say that, but at the same time it also feels good to say it.

And on that note, tis back to the spice mines with me. Have a lovely Friday, Constant Reader, and I’ll check in with you again tomorrow.

You Better Move On

I woke up not feeling so hot this morning. There was a touch of fever, a lot of sinus, and just over ickiness. I did take a COVID test that came back negative–praise the Lord–but I am achy and not feeling myself, so I bit the bullet and called in sick. Yay. And then to add insult to injury, my Internet went out. Grrrreeeeeeaaaaattttt. I turned my phone into a Hotspot, and Cox is quite generously sending someone out today between 5 and 7 because unplugging it and resetting the modem simply isn’t doing the trick the way it is supposed to. In fairness, I think we’ve had this modem since we moved back into the Lost Apartment just before Christmas of 2006, so I suppose it has lasted a really long time. But it is still fucking irritating to risk a data overage on my phone simply because Cox has a shitty customer service mentality. I’d switch to another provider but…I’ve heard terrible things about all of them, so maybe this is yet another case of the devil you know. I expect Cox to suck, so it’s frustrating but not a surprise.

My Apple TV router is also getting up there in years, too. Probably will need to replace it sooner than I’d prefer as well. Heavy heaving sigh.

I feel a little better now than I did this morning–I took a Claritin and it seems to have helped some–but I still have stomach upset and everything feels a little more tired than it should. I also have a mild headache–it was a major one before I took the Claritin, so it’s sinus-related. Our weather has been weird the last few days–very humid but not super-hot, even coldish–so we’ve had a lot of foggy mornings and nights which are never good with my sinuses. So I am assuming I’ve developed yet another sinus infection (hurray!) which hopefully the Claritin will spare me the worst of. But at least I didn’t feel good this morning, so I was at home for the Internet shenanigans. Imagine if I had gone to the office, come home to this after their hours, and had to deal with it? Who knows when they would deign to come fix is? I probably would have had to call out for work on another day, so at least this is all going to be handled today.

Sigh.

I’ve spent part of the morning under my blanket in my easy chair reading Wanda M. Morris’ Anywhere You Run and Constant Reader, it is marvelous. It’s even better, I think, than her debut All Her Little Secrets and if I’m not mistaken, I believe the two books may actually be connected, which is super cool. I had the great pleasure of meeting Wanda this year, and she’s just as kind and warm and lovely in person as she is a talented writer, which is amazing.

I was feeling off yesterday–which I guess was the start of this whatever the fuck it is–and so I wrote for a while yesterday morning before collapsing into my easy chair around three yesterday afternoon. We watched Kiss Kiss Bang Bang, which has been recommended to me by several people whose opinions I respect, but I didn’t enjoy it as much as I would have hoped, predicated on the enthusiasm with which it was recommended to me. I do love Robert Downey Jr. (pre-Iron Man; I never cared for his Tony Stark but hey, congrats, it made you richer than you could have ever imagined) and I thought the story was clever. I don’t really care for the breaking of the fourth wall so much, but I also loved that it was sort of based on a Brett Holiday novel (i’ve never read Holiday; I should rectify that sometime but I am not really a huge fan of the tough-guy books that proliferated in the pulpy post-war era. I absolutely hated I the Jury, and there’s not enough money in the world to persuade me to read another Mickey Spillane novel, and I suspect his Mike Shayne books fall into that category–the hard-nose tough guy, sexy two-dimensional “broads” who are devious, and so on) and it did have a lot of clever things that I appreciated. We then moved on to watch another episode of Welcome to Chippendales, which is interesting but could be better, and last night we watched The Texas Killing Fields docuseries about the I-45 murders between Houston and Galveston, which I vaguely remember from when my parents lived in Houston. (I also thought it was interesting that the first batch of killings, mostly young girls, teenaged or younger, was going on at the same time the Candyman was killing teenaged boys in another part of Houston. Houston: serial killer capital of Texas, clearly.) I was dozing off during the docuseries, so I missed a couple of important pieces to the story, but it wasn’t hard to stay up on the story and get caught up when I’d wake. We also got caught up on Andor and some of the other shows we’re watching.

Okay, I am feeling a bit woozy again so I am going to go back to my chair and Wanda’s book. Hope you have a better Monday than me, Constant Reader.

Goodbye Baby

Tuesday morning and all is quiet at this ungodly hour.

I’m up earlier than usual because I made the decision, whilst I was out of town, that the smart thing to do was get up when I actually wake up, rather than just continuing to lie in the bed awake. It’s comfortable, to be sure, and getting out from under my pile of blankets is never an easy thing to do….but it’s also wasteful of time and staying in bed doesn’t make getting up with the alarm any easier, nor does it make me less tired later in the day. All in all, it’s not going to kill me to get up earlier, so today is my first day trying it (not really, I woke up an hour earlier than necessary yesterday and just went ahead and got up then, so this is my second day of trying this to see how it all works for me). I had errands to run after work last night and I had to write a promotional piece for another blog for A Streetcar Named Murder–there really is no worse timing than having a book coming out as you are trying to meet the deadline on another.

It’s also weird because at the same time I have to try to remember things from Streetcar, which was finished months ago, and of course I’ve moved on to something new that I need to focus on. Heavy sigh. But I think the post I wrote last night is fun and interesting, and hopefully will spark some interest in the book. I’ve also been asked to sign at an event here in New Orleans in January–I want to say ALA, but I could be wrong–and I’ve also agreed to return to the dual Murder event weekend in Alabama yet again. I think this is the fourth time I’ve been invited? I love Margaret and Tammy, and I always have a lovely time at the event.

WE started watching that Hulu series about Chippendales last night, Welcome to Chippendales, starring Kumail Nanjiani as Steve Batterjee. I’ve watched a couple of documentaries about Chippendales and the resultant murder of one of the partners, but I’d forgotten about Dorothy Stratten’s connection to the club before she was murdered (someone really needs to do another series or movie about her life and death; Star 80 was good but…). It’s entertaining enough, and Chippendales also has something to do with the societal change in the sexualization and objectification of the male body that began in the 1970’s (along with the explosion of gay porn and Playgirl, followed by Calvin Klein ads in the 1980s), as well as the beauty standard for men. I recently (it may have been longer ago than what counts as recent, but time has lost all meaning to me now) commented to one of my younger gay male co-workers that “you used to be able to tell if someone was gay or not by how well built they were; if they clearly spent time on their bodies at the gym and ate right to improve the way they looked, they were gay because straight men didn’t give a shit.” Tribal tattoos also used to be a tell that a hot guy was gay. NOT ANYMORE. And the guys today–whatever their sexual orientation–have even more amazing bodies than we used to have back in the day; the definition and the focus on ab development and the absence of any body fat is far more pronounced amongst hot young men these days than it used to be. And they are everywhere. My Instagram and Twitter feeds are often filled with beautiful shots of incredibly handsome young men with unbelievable bodies; some of which I’ve sometimes shared here on the blog. I’ve also been seriously considering going to something else with the blog images, to be honest–I know some people would miss the sexy men images, but it also might be keeping other people away at the same time. I don’t know. But I started using pictures of hot men years ago because when the blog cross-posted to social media it would always show up as with a pale blue square box with a pencil in it, which I hated. When I talked about books, the book cover would come over, so I decided to use images of very hot men that essentially pop up somewhere on the Internet throughout the course of the day and it kind of became an ingrained habit, a default if you will, perhaps even a brand–I hate thinking of myself or anything I do as a writer as a ‘brand,’ and yes, I do recognize that my writing is a product for sale, but it’s not a pack of T-shirts or underwear or a pair of pants hanging on a sales rack. So, do I really want my ‘brand’ for my blog to be sexy shirtless men?

Probably a little late to worry about that now.

The Chippendales calendar–how many years did I buy that? I can remember being deathly afraid to take it to the cash register at the bookstore…but now that I am thinking about it, I don’t remember which bookstores I used to patronize in Fresno. Perhaps a Barnes and Noble at the mall? A Waldenbooks, maybe? But yes, I used to feel my face burning with embarrassment as I tried to nonchalantly buy a Chippendales calendar, all the while thinking the cashier knows I am gay because why else would I be buying this calendar? Now I laugh at the memory of the shame I used to feel. The cashier couldn’t have given two shits about what I was buying, and even if they did, who cares? I had always been attracted more to athletes than any other type of male; I always had a thing for muscles and worked out bodies. Why, I don’t know; whether I was simply wired that way for physical attraction, or if it’s because the first naked bodies of men that I saw were those of athletes in school. Junior high was the first time I ever had to change into gym clothes, shower and be around other naked boys, and I was never comfortable doing so. The locker room before and after gym in junior high was a nightmare, but once I was in high school and on sports teams…the boys I was attracted to were usually athletes. That never really changed over the years as I got older and grew more comfortable with my sexuality–what changed were the bodies. Whereas only athletes and dancers, gay men, and narcissistic straight men used to regularly go to the gym and work out their bodies to build muscle, gradually it became a thing for all men across the board, regardless of orientation. On the rare occasions when I go to the gym now, I see incredibly well-built and well-muscled young men all the time–and while thirty years ago I would have assumed they were gay or bisexual, now I can’t assume anything. I just marvel at the shift in societal attitudes towards men no longer in school who continue to exercise and work out–whether to be healthier or for something to show off and attract women, who knows?

But aesthetically, I appreciate them.

So, the quandary remains. Do I try to rebrand the blog by using other types of pictures, and if so, what kind should I start using? Would people miss the hot guys? Would more people be drawn to the blog rather than closing the browser window as soon as the hot guy loads?

Or do I just not worry about it–as I have never worried about people coming here to read the entries–and keep on as I have been? Decisions, decisions.

And on that note, I am heading into the spice mines. Have a lovely Tuesday, Constant Reader, and I will talk to you again tomorrow.