Tag: writing

She’s In Love With The Boy

Tuesday morning, New Year’s Eve Eve, as it were, and Paul is leaving today to visit his family. I don’t much care for it when he isn’t home; maybe the first day or two are kind of nice and quiet and peaceful, but it starts getting on my nerves after a couple of days. It’s also amazing how empty the house seems when he’s out of town. Although, I suppose one day it might be something I’ll have to get used to? I will cross that proverbial bridge when I get to it. So, I will come home to an empty house tonight, and Sparky will glue himself to me for the next six days. There are worse things, I suppose, than cat cuddles on cold nights, and having a little tortie shadow following me around and never letting me out of his sight. I’m glad I only have to work tomorrow–Friday is my work-at-home day still–because he will be very traumatized when I get home after work tomorrow. He’ll not be so bad tonight–he won’t miss Paul until he doesn’t come home tomorrow at all. He really is the sweetest boy, and I’ll have to give him a lot of attention.

Which I do not mind in the least.

I found out yesterday that one of my dearest friends (and biggest supporters) passed away a few weeks ago. She’d been ill for a long time, so I hadn’t seen her in quite some time, because she had low energy and heart issues, and I am a lot (I am). I had actually thought the other day about her and how we needed to get over there to catch up and say hello…too little too late. Heavy sigh. The worst part of getting older is losing loved ones to the angel of death. That was the part I never thought about; I guess I was assuming everyone I loved would outlive me.

Apparently, that’s not going to be the case and I’ll probably wind up living to a hundred. Which would be just my luck, you know? I just keep going on and on, shouting at clouds and forgetting what I went into the kitchen for. Hurray. But I will miss her terribly. Oh, how hard she could make me laugh! And so incredibly smart, too; I loved talking to her about books and movies and television shows we enjoyed. She was a huge mystery fan, as well as holding a PhD in History (I’d jokingly call her “Doc” every once in a while, which she hated–I don’t know why I enjoy teasing people so much; I should probably stop).

Sigh.

But with Paul gone, I can watch some things I’ve been pushing off but meaning to get around to–my re-watch of the Brendan Fraser Mummy movies comes to mind–and there’s no excuse for not being able to get back into reading extensively again. I’m enjoying the two books I’ve started, but am not making much progress. My Noirmas was a complete bust, but I did get to reread The Postman Always Rings Twice, and I have some essays to finish for the newsletter. Noirmas is technically not over until Twelfth Night, January 6th, so I have time to get some of these other choices read before starting my next reading project, whatever it might be. Maybe some non-fiction? I’ve got some awesome non-fiction books on hand; maybe I should dig into those? Nonfiction February? That could be a winner, and I can then extend Noirmas through January.

I also am not certain why I am so focused on projects, but it makes me happy, so there’s that.

And on that note, I am heading into the spice mines. Have a lovely New Year’s Eve Eve, Constant Reader and I shall be back on the last day of 2025!

I really hate his bikini….but the rest is nice, isn’t it?

Don’t Let the Green Grass Fool You

And it’s back to the office with me this morning. Bleargh. There are worse things, after all, and I don’t have to go in on Thursday, so that’s something. But it’s been a hot minute since I got up this early, so it feels weird to be sitting here, a bit groggy, with dark outside. But my coffee tastes good and the incoming cold weather doesn’t strike until tomorrow. Paul is leaving to see his mom tomorrow and won’t be back until sometime Sunday, so it’s just going to be me and a lonely, needy cat here for nearly a week. That’s okay; I don’t mind having Sparky glued to me at all times when I’m home. He really doesn’t like being left alone by himself, and he really doesn’t like it when only one of us is home. He’s a spoiled little baby, but he’s our spoiled little baby, isn’t he?

I feel surprisingly good this morning; it wasn’t a struggle to get out of bed and I was also able to resist hitting snooze repeatedly until I had to rush around the house like a madman, either. Today is my injection day, so I need to take it out of the refrigerator to thaw out for forty-five minutes before attaching it to myself. I also don’t know if today is an Admin Day or a clinic day; in either case, we aren’t busy at all this week so it’s not a very big deal, one way or the other. The rest of the week is very slow, too–we kick back into high gear next week, after the new year, as everyone’s insurance resets for a new calendar year. Woo-hoo! But my mood is good, I don’t feel tired, the coffee is going down well, and I am getting a bit hungry and may have to eat my breakfast sandwich here in a moment.

I was really hungry! But that sandwich hit the spot properly. I also have to do my every-eight-weeks-injection–and I can sort of tell it’s almost time. My digestive system hasn’t been painful or anything, but…I can tell when the injection is almost due. I’ve been very dehydrated lately, so need to focus on replenishing electrolytes this week, too; this is all related, of course, to the UC (bastard that it is). I am sure everything will be fine once I pump the medicine into my abdomen for five minutes. So exciting!

We watched Cover-Up, the documentary about Seymour Hersh, which was very interesting. I hadn’t thought of Sy Hersh in years, but have always appreciated his reporting work. He does kind of come across as a bit of a dick in the documentary, but they don’t make journalists like him anymore, which is a pity. My formative teen years (the 1970s) was a decade of spectacular journalism, which made me think that the bad old days of yellow journalism and if it bleeds it leads were a thing of the past and all journalists were ethical and did things the right way and protected the public interest all these years…Fox and our current embarrassment of legacy media is definitely something that needs to be fixed in the future, but our system has become so corrupted that they don’t even bother trying to hide it anymore.

Brigitte Bardot, the Nazi skank who couldn’t act, died. Hope she’s enjoying the flames of hell like the racist homophobic piece of shit deserved. You didn’t become famous for your intellect, madam. After Anthony Geary and Rob Reiner, it was nice to not feel a bit sad when a celebrity died.

The long holiday weekend was lovely, even if I accomplished very little. I did run the dishwasher before I went to bed last night, so I need to unload it tonight, and pick up a few things around the apartment. I also have to make a bit of groceries on my way home from work tonight–nothing major, nothing much, just a couple of things to get me through the week. Tomorrow night I’ll need to swing by the post office to pay the rental and pick up the mail for the last time in 2025…2026 might be worse than 2025, but at least for now there’s the promise of things getting better somehow. I usually do start the year with optimism…

And on that note, I am heading into the spice mines. Have a lovely last Monday of the year, Constant Reader, and I’ll be back here for New Year’s Eve Eve tomorrow.

There Stands the Glass

Sunday, and the last day of this rather lengthy weekend I was blessed with this year. I didn’t do the things I had hoped to do yesterday morning when I was drinking coffee and being hopeful, but before I knew it, it was nearly noon and I decided to go ahead and get the new television set up, while learning to use it. I also slept in this morning, despite Sparky’s best efforts, despite planning on getting up much earlier that I actually did. No sense crying over spilt milk, though, is there? I do feel good this morning, and that’s always nice. My coffee is tasting marvelous, and yes, I have some chores to get done, especially the kitchen–don’t ask–so I will try to get that done while I work on writing.

It took me a while to get the television put together and up on the mantel, which was no small feet since it was just me and it is a 65″ television. But I didn’t want to wait for Paul, and I did get it all set up; it’s a “smart television,” which concerned me at first as I was certain I wasn’t smart enough to set it up…but I managed somehow. It was just a little time-consuming as the software needed an update, and so forth and so on, but by around two-thirty-ish it was operational and I felt comfortable using it, and its remote. And Constant Reader, it is enormous. The picture quality is so sharp, it seems like people are in the living room for me to watch. It also takes a moment for my eyes to adjust to its sheer size…but it will make science fiction shows look amazing (I watched the opening of The Force Awakens just to see, and wow!), and the Winter Olympics…yeah, I would have never thought about getting a new television, but I am very glad we did. I watched the LSU game last night on it–I see this morning they lost; I was falling asleep so went to bed after halftime–and the picture quality! Yes, I am very pleased we got a new television. I think the old one was almost ten years old? Practically archaic in technology terms, right?

When I think about the changes in technology I’ve seen during my lifetime…it really makes me feel old. I’ve seen too much! I was thinking about this last night–triggered, no doubt, by my delight in the new “smart” television–and how limited we used to be with entertainment options. If you didn’t see a movie when it came out, you had to catch it when it went to television (remember network television premieres?) and hope it wasn’t butchered by television censors (see Cabaret as a prime example) too badly. Even the advent of cable didn’t change things that much; we were still tied to when things aired. It was the same with books. It never occurred to me, ever, that if they didn’t have a book I wanted in the store I could just order it. (It wasn’t terrible; I inevitably spent over a hundred dollars every time I went into a bookstore.)

I didn’t read anything yesterday; I don’t know why, but after setting up the television and taking all the packaging (so much packaging!) out to the trash, I was revisited by the malaise. I watched a lot of videos on Youtube (fall of Rome; the Ptolemaic dynasty in Egypt, etc.) while not really doing much of anything other than free form writing in my journal. I was also trying to remember things I enjoyed in 2025 in order to do a year-end summary; the memory isn’t what it used to be…but the biggest thing was finally finding out what’s been wrong with me for so long and finally getting it treated. It’s been a journey, hasn’t it? And one I didn’t even know I was on until this past spring when I got so sick and had to be hospitalized. The six days in the hospital was a hard reset that enabled me to catch my breath and think some more about everything, remembering that only I can make changes to my life that I need to make and the only way to do so is decide what changes to make and how to go about making those changes. It was also a kind of wake-up call, a reminder that I don’t have as much time left on this planet as perhaps I might want. So…maybe the year end round up might be more philosophical? We shall see.

And on that note, I am heading into the spice mines. Have a lovely Sunday, and I’ll be back tomorrow morning before going to the office.

The End of the World

Don’t they know, it’s the end of the world…it ended when you said, goodbye…..

Saturday morning in the Lost Apartment, and a lovely day, indeed. I slept really late this morning, after a big day of getting things done and running around town. I got up in the morning and did some chores (still need to unload the dishwasher), so have a bit of touching up to do today to make it look nice again. I ran some errands in the morning, picking up the mail and getting my present to myself (new LSU house shoes), caught up on the news, and then we went to Costco, where we got our new television…it’s ENORMOUS, and today I am going to spend a little time getting it all hooked up, trying to remember passwords, and hopefully it’ll be operational for the LSU bowl game this evening. We didn’t do a BIG Costco run, but we picked up a few things. Paul is leaving Tuesday and coming back on Sunday, so there wasn’t any point to doing a big shop there. I ordered pizza from That’s Amore in Metairie to be delivered, and we settled in for a nice evening watching the season finale of Heated Rivalry (more on that later), before Paul went up to work on the upstairs while I watched research videos on Youtube.

As I said, Sparky let me sleep in until after nine this morning, which was wild, but doing all that yesterday wore me out, I guess. I wasn’t tired at all yesterday, but clearly went to bed and slept for over ten hours. So, 2026 is clearly going to be, and needs to be, about getting myself into better physical condition, which isn’t going to be easy at sixty-four going on sixty-five. But I look forward to this new challenge! One of my primary goals for 2026 is definitely going to be getting myself into better physical condition. I don’t care about losing weight or how I look; I just want to be able to do things and not exhaust myself. Now that the over-arching fatigue has finally come to an end, I don’t think that’s going to be a problem anymore, but I need stamina more than anything else. The stamina is getting better–I didn’t have to collapse into my easy chair last night when we got home, for an example–but clearly, I depleted energy reserves that needed to be recharged over night. There are some things I need to do that I could do today, but I don’t know that I’ll get to them or have the motivation to do them. I mean, the television itself is going to be an enormous, if necessary, pain in the ass–just remembering the passwords for streaming services and other apps is going to be nightmarish and will undoubtedly wind up with me having to reset any number of passwords. Heavy heaving sigh. I do want to get some reading and writing done today, too. I think I’ll finish this, put the dishes away, and read for a while before getting cleaned up and setting up the television.

So, Heated Rivalry. I wasn’t sure what to expect from this final episode (until 2027), but what we got was a very sweet episode that ended with the boys ultimately coming out to Shane’s parents. This is a perfect set up for the next season–they are a couple now, with a plan to keep things quiet publicly, coming up with a charity they can start together as well as Ilya changing teams to Ottawa, so they will live only a few hours apart–which I was wondering about. I know the book series focuses on a different couple with each new story, so I was wondering how that would work–would they do a Bridgerton, or will they continue to focus on Shane and Ilya? I enjoyed this show a lot more than I expected to, honestly; I would also recommend it highly. I’m not going to go into more detail because I am going to do a newsletter about it, trying to ground it within the realm of queer media representation…and how glad I was that it wasn’t an American show, which never seems to really (with a few exceptions) get things right.

And I still have another day off! Whee!

And on that note, I am going to let Sparky have my desk chair and head into the spice mines to read for a moment. Have a great day, and I’ll be here tomorrow–probably earlier.

I love misty nights in New Orleans…

Tulsa Time

Well, it’s the Day After Christmas, aka the second day of Christmas as we head into the arrival of Twelfth Night and the start of Carnival, which means I can start getting cream cheese filled King cakes again. Yay for king cakes! I feel good this morning, and am up earlier than I rose on the actual holidays. There’s a lot for me to do today: the kitchen is a mess yet again because I didn’t clean up after making dinner; today is also wash the bedding day; we’re going to Costco; and I have other errands as well–the mail, a prescription. I also want to continue my organizing–all that running around probably isn’t conducive to doing much writing, so it’s going to be a reading/cleaning/organizing day mostly. And I need to get the cleaning done before we go to Costco.

But turning my mind off for two days was lovely. We finished watching Down Cemetery Road, which we enjoyed, and started Welcome to Derry, which didn’t really grab me, but we’ll keep watching. I also want to watch Frankenstein this weekend, and possibly get started on my The Mummy rewatching. Sounds pretty ambitious, doesn’t it? We only have New Year’s Day off this coming week, so it won’t be as lovely as this week has been, but it’s still kind of nice to have an extra day off in the week. But it’s back to reality now, and I can’t pretend I don’t have anything I need to get done anymore. Heavy heaving sigh. But I actually enjoy getting things done–it’s making myself do them that’s the problem. Once I am underway with everything, though, I don’t mind it. I even find cleaning enormously satisfying. Yes, I know, it’s not normal. I’ve proudly never been normal!

Well, I am back; I took a breakfast, coffee, and news break. Sparky had also parked himself in my chair while I was doing something and I wasn’t in the mood to start fighting him for my chair. But just as I was about to connect the laptop to the television, I noticed he wasn’t in my chair anymore and must have gone upstairs without me noticing. I’ve already started clearing everything out of the sink and tumbled another load of laundry in the dryer. So, ambition is firing on all cylinders thus far, although we’ll have to see how long motivation lasts and I can get things going and finished and so forth. I do want to get some writing done today, even if it isn’t very much; anything is a start, after all, and a journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step, doesn’t it?

How very zen of me this morning! It’s like I don’t even know who I am anymore! But as 2025 slowly slides into 2026–hard to believe there’s only five days left in this year–I find myself becoming ever more introspective and reflective. It has been a dreadful decade for me (pretty much everyone else, too; it seems like everyone I know has had it rough for quite some time), and I did a lot of turning inward, as well as letting things go and learning how to say no and mean it; and stop worrying that people will think less of me for saying no. If I disappoint people, so be it; I’ve been disappointing people my entire life thus far so why should it change for the last few decades I hopefully have left? Worrying about disappointing people doesn’t make me not disappoint them, and the worrying, that horrific mind spiral, is exhausting.

And let’s face it–it’s not like other people worry about disappointing me, you know?

It’s seventy nine degrees this morning in New Orleans, with a bright sun and a clear blue sky; simply gorgeous. We’re also supposed to get a cold front next week, but it won’t be as horrible as it is everywhere north of here. Paul is also leaving to go see his mom and family on Tuesday (New Year’s Eve Eve) so I’ll be here alone on New Year’s, but that’s fine. Maybe that’s the day I’ll do my Mummy marathon rewatch?

Sounds like a good idea.

Also, Mississippi River Mischief is on sale for a mere $4.95 at the Bold Strokes website! In print! There’s also a lot of other great titles from BSB as well, for the same low price, through December 31! What are you waiting for! Follow that link!

And on that note, I am heading into the spice mines and running my first errands of the day! But never fear, I shall be back tomorrow morning with a full report on my day!

I love the lighting in this, and how the out of picture streetlight fades into shadow…

Old Town Road

So this is Christmas! Hope everyone has the kind of day they desire; as for me, I am staying inside all day and being a lazy slug, which is exactly what I did yesterday, and it was absolutely marvelous. I didn’t even read anything; I wanted my brain turned off completely and didn’t even want to think about anything or everything. It was nice. I feel really rested and relaxed this morning…Sparky started demanding I get up about six, but he’s actually sweet about it. He’ll try for a bit, and when I don’t get up he’ll cuddle for a bit, but every time I move, he’ll try again for a little while before going back to being cuddly. I don’t have the heart to tell him that his being cuddly makes me want to stay in bed all the more…

Cats are marvelous pets, really.

We got very heavily into our binge of Down Cemetery Road, which we are really enjoying. I’m going to have to read the book it was based on, written by Mick Herron–someone I’ve not read yet but is really recommended by almost everyone I know who has read his work. Emma Thompson is terrific, and I hope this gets another season; there are four books in total about Zoë Boehm. She’s going to be a favorite at the Emmys, deservedly so. I also started watching the 1995 Canadian Hardy Boys series, but turned it off after five minutes because it was terrible; the Hardy Boys/juvenile series groups I belong to despise the show, but I wanted to give it a shot, as they tend to not like anything that is even slightly different from the books…but in this instance, they were absolutely correct. I then started a German/South African adaptation of another juvenile series I enjoyed, The Three Investigators and the Secret of Terror Castle, which has a very young Cameron Monaghan playing Bob Andrews, but I didn’t finish it, either–despite a very strong start, I was too fidgety yet to commit to watching anything other than Youtube videos until Paul got home from having his hair colored.

A most exciting Christmas Eve, was it not?

I also did some chores–laundry, dishes, the kitchen–but for the most part, it was exactly the kind of day I wanted and needed, and here’s hoping that today will be the same. I won’t start making the turkey in the slow cooker until noonish, so we can have it for dinner tonight as we finish watching Down Cemetery Road. I’ll probably start making notes for my end of 2025 recap soon, too.

And on that note, I am going to bring this to a close. Have a wonderful day, no matter how you spend it or what you do with it, Constant Reader, and as always, thank you for stopping by!

At a glance this guy reminds me of Pete Buttigieg.

If I Had a Boat

Christmas Eve!

It’s a bit foggy this morning, with the bright sun’s rays desperately trying to pierce through to light up the day. It’s also warm again this morning–New Orleans winter bipolarity striking once more–but I slept late, feel great, and am very relaxed this morning. I don’t really have a lot of plans for today; I’m going to do some chores (because there’s always chores) and I really want to not do much of anything tomorrow on Christmas. We decided to get the pizza on Friday for the weekend (along with a trip to Costco to get a new television), and I got a turkey breast to put in the slow cooker tomorrow for pulled turkey, so it will be sort of festive. I have some dishes and laundry to do today, too–no rush, and I can do them whenever. Paul has things to do outside the house, so I am going to have the afternoon alone here to read and do those chores and just chill. It’s going to be rather pleasant and relaxing, methinks. Huzzah!

I did stop and make groceries on my way home last night, which wasn’t as terrible as one might have expected for the night before Christmas Eve. I had the malaise again yesterday at the office, but I got everything done that needed to be done, and now I am current again with everything, which is absolutely lovely. This is an improvement, I must add; before whenever I’d have the malaise it struck everything; including the day job with me pushing everything back because…I don’t wanna. This new version of malaise doesn’t halt me from working at the office; it just affects my writing and editing and creating. I did feel somewhat tired when I got home last night, which is why I didn’t do any chores or anything, just collapsing into my easy chair to catch up on the news, bond with a needy Sparky, and chill out. I found myself watching reaction videos of hockey fans watching Heated Rivalry (which is really having a moment, isn’t it?), which was very fun. We also started watching Down Cemetery Road with Emma Thompson, which is quite excellent. (Ruth Wilson is also terrific in it.)

It’s also weird this week because I keep thinking today is Friday, just as I kept thinking yesterday was Thursday all day. My days and dates are going to be all fucked up now, and I’ll soon have to check to see what day of the week it is. It’s a little bit disorienting here and there, of course, but I plan to use these five days to get sorted; I’ve kind of felt scattered and disorganized all year (well, this entire decade), and I want to use this free time to do some writing, yes, but also to try to get a stronger grip on things. I also have to prepare for my year-end wrap-up as well as set goals for the new year. I don’t remember what my goals were for 2025, but I’m going to go out on a limb and say I didn’t accomplish any of them. I only wrote one book this year, and I think I published two or three short stories? I’ve sold one that will be in anthology that comes out next year, but that’s it.

What I really need is a thorough to-do list, and I bought a specific notebook (with Things I Need to Get Done But Probably Won’t on the cover) for to-do lists for 2026, which is a nice start to getting organized for the year, methinks. In fact, I think I’ll make my initial to-do list (for the rest of the year) at some point today. I may even start my rewatch of the Brendan Fraser Mummy movies this morning; one never knows. I was also thinking it might be nice to rewatch Gods and Monsters again….hmmm. There’s also the new Frankenstein to watch, too.

And on that pleasant note, I am heading into the spice mines. Have a marvelous Christmas Eve, Constant Reader, no matter how you choose to spend it.

And I’ll be back tomorrow morning like presents under a tree.

Snapped one night walking around my gorgeous neighborhood!

Guitars, Cadillacs

Merry Christmas Eve Eve! I just have to get through the day and then it’s holiday vacation time! I got a lot done at work yesterday, but was very low-energy. I wasn’t tired, or fatigued, or even sleepy (the three stages of tired for me), but just a little bit off. More of an “odd energy” day than anything else, I suppose. But I wasn’t in the mood to stop and make groceries on the way home as I had planned–and didn’t realize until just now how stupid it is to go to the grocery store the night before Christmas Eve…heavy heaving sigh, but it’ll have to do. I’ll just go uptown and get the mail when I leave the office today, swing by the store, and get gas. No worries, no problems, and no big deal. There was hardly any traffic yesterday morning when I drove to work, and not really much on the way home, either. Here’s hoping that will last through today, right? Sparky was needy when I got home last night, too, so I didn’t get much of anything done last night, either–which is perfectly fine. I did think some things through during the day and evening, so it counts.

It’s the malaise, I suppose. My mind is also unfocused right now, so my creativity energy is bouncing all over the place and so many different works that are in progress right now racing through my brain…it’s actually fun, if annoying. I think I will actually spend Christmas Eve and Christmas not doing much of anything other than mildly picking up and straightening the house, and reading. Then I have three full days to get things done before I return to the office on Monday for a mere three day work week before my next day off, then work at home Friday, and another weekend. I am getting terribly, terribly spoiled.

Hilariously, someone had put up a voodoo doll dressed up as an ICE agent and stuck full of pins here in New Orleans, and that (of all things) went viral over the weekend. The result? MORE of them popped up all over New Orleans, especially after our Attorney General Liz Murrill (aka Pam Bondi Lite) reacted publicly by threatening people with criminal charges for putting up–wait for it–voodoo dolls1. Apparently a significant portion of them have been calling in sick since the first one went up. Thoughts and prayers, guys, thoughts and prayers.

One thing you have to say about Heated Rivalry–it’s enormously popular and driving a lot of conversations. As always, the discourse on who can write who, who can make money writing about whom, and who gets their work adapted for the screen popped up again, as it inevitably does; and it is a conversation that does need to be had…but without hurt feelings, nastiness, and homophobia. As I always say, writers can write about whatever they want and for whatever reason they might have, whether writers should is a different and highly nuanced conversation that cannot be had on social media, for the record.

Let me say this, though: whatever anyone wants to say about them, at least m/m writers don’t write tragedy/trauma porn, and they don’t kill off their gay characters, which put them miles head of most straight authors, who choose to write gay characters as sad, tragic losers destined for unhappiness, misery, and early death.

The noble, tragic gay trope is very, very tired.

And I love that the show is opening eyes, hearts, and minds. What more could anyone ask for? (I do love seeing older straight white women explaining to Gen Z queers how hard it used to be to come out; isn’t it still?) It still burns my ass that Netflix canceled Boots like the craven cowards they are, but they have a history of this; see Dead Boy Detectives (but I think that was canceled because of Neil Gaiman predator blowback, other than having a gay main character). But there is already a second series of Heated Rivalry greenlighted; not sure how that will precisely work.

And on that cheery note, I am heading into the spice mines. Have a lovely pre-Christmas Eve, and I will be back on the morrow for more holiday cheer!

Ah, the things I would do to Mario Lopez…
  1. And I love that ICE is afraid of voodoo in New Orleans. Shouldn’t have come, Gestapo man, shouldn’t have come. And the curses laid upon you here will follow you for the rest of your life… ↩︎

Baby Now That I’ve Found You

Monday and back to the office with me this morning. I only have to go into the office today and tomorrow this week; the schedule is absurdly (almost ridiculously) light in the clinic for the next two days; somehow I’ll make it through to my lengthy holiday weekend. I feel good and rested this morning, too. It was a very lovely and peaceful weekend, and I managed to get a lot done (and I am not qualifying that anymore by decrying what I didn’t get done). Baby steps to a healthier me, which was one of the goals for 2025, wasn’t it? As a new year looms, it’s also time to start thinking about my goals for 2026…

Yesterday was rather nice and lovely. Sparky let me sleep in yesterday morning, and I did some chores throughout the course of the day. It was, as always, lovely to come down this morning to a mostly clean kitchen, with only a few things left to do tonight when I get home to reestablish order in the kitchen. Now that I’ve got the downstairs under control again, it should be a lot easier to maintain, which means I can spend time cleaning the stuff I never get around to–baseboards, windows, etc.–and I should probably take the car to the car wash at some point during the holiday weekend. I’ll have to still run errands, of course, but after I get Christmas dinner on Christmas Eve–we’re getting a deep dish pizza from That’s Amore out in Metairie–I should be able to spend Wednesday and Thursday without having to go anywhere. Huzzah, indeed! It was also gorgeous outside; it was in the high seventies when I ran yesterday morning’s errand. I think it’s going to be similar today, too.

The Saints won, which is three straight wins after a disastrous start to the season, which helped set the tone for a nice day. I also started reading yesterday, easing into reading Eli Cranor’s Mississippi Blue Forty-two and Bruce Campbell’s The Secret of Hangman’s Inn, the sixth Ken Holt mystery–both of which start very well. (The homoeroticism rampant I remember from the Ken Holt series is also on full display in the opening chapter, too.) I finally finished my newsletter about Laurie R. King’s O Jerusalem yesterday, too, and if you are so inclined, you can read it here. I have another one I want to do about General Hospital; I’d already started one months ago, but Anthony Geary’s death made it seem a bit more timely now than it was before (I hadn’t known they’d killed off Luke Spencer on the show, either, when he retired–in case he wanted to come back. Not that dying on camera on a soap means anything, of course.); I’d watched the show as a child with our babysitter, but got back into it when Mom started watching after we moved to Kansas–and I came back to the show when it was Number One rated and firing on all cylinders…which was before many people today were alive.

Another yikes, right?

Speaking of yikes, what the hell hath CBS wrought with the hiring of the ultimate mediocrity, Bari Weiss, to run their news department? That town hall with EriKa KirK was an absolute joke–and from everything I am seeing and hearing, their progress down the path to hell has no good intentions to pave their way. One thing that the last ten years has brought with it is the loss of any credibility that mainstream legacy media had; they’ve utterly abdicated and shat all over the legacy of good journalism and the First Amendment. They will never recover any credibility, and maybe that’s a good thing? I don’t know, but this all goes back to Reagan; today’s monster was conceived in his rotting brain, and that was where it began.

We did watch Murder in Monaco this weekend, which was quite interesting and fun; about the murder of Edouard Safra in Monaco in the late 1990s. I remember reading Dominick Dunne’s reporting on the case in Vanity Fair back in the day, and of course, Dunne suspected that the male nurse (arrested, tried, convicted) was being framed by the “black widow” Lily Safra, who had an earlier husband also die under very mysterious circumstances. This update on the case, with more revelations and more information on the aftermath that is very enlightening, is very interesting.

I also worked on some short stories yesterday, which was pretty awesome. I am trying to get some stories ready to submit by the end of the month, and so yesterday I worked on fleshing them out and making them stronger. The three I am working on, and hope to finish and submit, are “Even Katydids Dream,” “Come Sail Away,” and “No Security Provided.” I also have a historical story to polish for another anthology, and I think I am going to try to hit up both EQMM and AHMM in the new year with new stories. Very fun, indeed.

I also paged through Creole: The History and Legacy of Louisiana’s Free People of Color, from LSU Press, edited by Sybil Kein. There’s so much about Louisiana and New Orleans history and culture that I don’t know, and if I am going to write stories (and/or novels) set in New Orleans history, I need to understand it and have more knowledge of it; and this collection of historical essays about the Free People of Color, and how old Louisiana/New Orleans society was structured, will help me with that. (Although paging through it yesterday made me see some seriously archaic and racist language, which I suppose should be expected when reading about the past down here.)

I am looking forward to the holiday vacation, in all honesty; even if I don’t get as much done as I would like (which is very likely, since it always happens), but it’s also nice to have an easy time of it during the holiday season. And on that note, I am heading into the spice mines for the day. Enjoy your Monday, Constant Reader, and I’ll check in with you again tomorrow, on Christmas Eve Eve.

Remind me again, MAGA and Fox News, how Christmas is “under attack.”

Crazy Arms

Sunday morning and all is calm in the house. I feel good, very well-rested and cheerful, which of course is lovely. The Sparkster let me sleep in till almost eight, and now I am finishing my first cup of coffee and have already had this morning’s slice of chocolate marble swirl coffee cake (can’t imagine why I can’t lose weight, can you?), and am about to get another cup of coffee. I did get some things done yesterday, which is cool, and have more things to do today as well. I have one errand to run later this morning, and I’m going to get that out of the way, come home and get cleaned up and get back into working for a bit. Yesterday was a lovely day. I worked some more on the apartment, and delved even more deeply into my renamed main character in the current work. I’m also going to try writing it in the first person present tense, which is going to be really hard for me. (I tend to always use first person past tense.)

The best part of writing a book is this part–even if a lot of this background work never makes it into the finished part.

I’ve been listening a lot to old Fleetwood Mac albums in the car lately, and while they’ve always been my favorite band of all time–every album is a gem, in its own way–when I go for a while without listening I sometimes forget why they are my favorite band of all time. This past week I was listening to their Christine McVie-less recording from the early aughts, Say You Will, which is really good, but kind of Buckingham Nicks 2.0, really. I also like watching Youtube videos of young people listening to their recordings for the first time, and appreciating the artistry, talent, sound, and production values. Rumours will always be my favorite album of all time, and my favorite album of theirs, but the others are also excellent and merit more listening.

We watched this week’s episode of Heated Rivalry, which was probably the best, and most engaging, episode of the show thus far (I loved episode 3, spoiler alert); the first time I cared whether the main characters were just fuck buddies or a couple slowly falling in love. I still have some thoughts about the show, some quibbles as it were, mostly about relationship roles and the feminization of bottoms, but that can wait till I’ve finished watching the show and review it for the newsletter. (I’m still bitter about the cancelation of Boots, but…they also could have seriously fucked up a second season, so I’m choosing to see this cancelation, evil as it was, as a good thing.)

I did have the college football games on yesterday, but the only one we watched was Miami-Texas A&M, which was the only good game of the day. We turned off the later games to watch other things once it was clear they were not going to be competitive. Despite their blowout losses, good for both Tulane and James Madison for having breakout seasons and making it to the playoffs before a lot of name brand schools did. I don’t know if I’ll watch the quarterfinals or not; I don’t care who wins but I am also not a big fan of any school still left in it–although I always pull for underdogs, so I kind of would like to see Indiana do well–so am not sure.

I did finally finish reading The Postman Always Rings Twice yesterday; it’s really a nasty little book, isn’t it? I now can see why it was controversial; for one, it’s told from the villain’s point of view, which may or may not have been shocking to readers in the 1930s. (This particular reread also made me realize I need to delve more deeply into Chlorine and my main character–who he is, what he wants–and very glad I did; this reread was crucial.) Postman also deserves its own newsletter (I need to get some of the others done and out of the way already, don’t I?), where I can talk about this vicious little novella that changed everything in the crime fiction genre (I”m talking out of my ass here, but I would imagine it did challenge the sensibilities of readers conditioned to Christie, Queen, and Sayers, among many others), and its impact on me, both as a writer and a reader. I also generally don’t revisit Postman often; usually I just revisit Double Indemnity and Mildred Pierce, but am very glad I did. It made me see what was wrong with what I had already done on this book.

I also gave my main character a new stage name–because the old one really didn’t work. It was more modern than the weird names movie stars were given in the late 1940s and early 1950s (Tab Hunter, Rock Hudson, Troy Donahue), and so yesterday one of those dopey names came to me as I was cleaning the house; and realized it would work, plus would help define the amorality and narcissism in the character. I will reuse the working name for him in another book, certainly–it’s a good name–but this new one is even better.

And on that note, I am heading into the spice mines. The sun is shining outside (it’s gorgeous out, just as it was yesterday), and I still have some things to do this morning. I’m going to start reading the new Eli Cranor. methinks, while also revisiting a classic juvenile series mystery from one of my favorite juvenile series. I also have some short stories I want to work on, too. Have a lovely Sunday, Constant Reader, and I will be back in the morning before I head in for my last two work days before Christmas.

The gift where they meant well, but didn’t think about the cost-feeding, clothing, cleaning up after him, etc.