Posts Tagged ‘Angel’

The Gulf Out Front

We’ve just returned from Pensacola Beach, where we dove equally into fine dining, history, and the Gulf of Mexico. Usually, we go to Galveston when we want some time in the sun and salt breeze, but this time we decided to go EAST…and for some reason, Pensacola beckoned. It’s not a difficult trip from Lafayette, I-10 all the way, and what with stops for food and gasoline…almost $4.00 a gallon…we made it handily in about four and a half hours.
We’re big believers in VRBO, vacation renters by owner, usually more reasonable than hotels and ALWAYS a lot more caring and considerate, so we checked Pensacola Beach out on the net and found a VRBO rental in the Treehouse development, a three-story townhouse on the beach which fit our needs perfectly, only about a hundred yards from the gulf with an unobstructed view from the master bedroom on the third floor and a back yard for Baxter and Angel. It felt like home almost immediately.
Of course, Angel and I went for our walks, this time twice a day, but we had a little problem with her.  She’s a barker…mostly protective it seems to me; she ALWAYS barks and growls at other dogs (Baxter excepted…she IGNORES him), but this time she seemed to consider SEAGULLS a threat…and God help you if it was a PELICAN!  Baxter, on the other hand, was a pussycat.  The funny thing is he discovered his reflection in the glass door into the back yard, and you could just see the wheels turning.  “Poor little guy, he followed us here all the way from Lafayette, and he’s STILL trapped in that shiny thing.  He brought treats and toys to the door, but the little dog seemed to have his own and showed no interest.  Whenever Baxter went into the back yard, the first thing he did was to check on the little dog in the glass and make sure he was still there and okay.

Sabine Bay Out Back

What with the wind and all, there was only ONE day when the surf flags were yellow allowing swimming, but the bay on the other side of the unit had a nice sand beach and no flags. I got to throw myself into the incredibly clear water on that one day, but the rest of the time I either had to walk with my lady on the beach or swim in Little Sabine Bay…by the way…just as COLD. I guess you gotta expect that when you go to Florida in April.
The seafood was outstanding…INCREDIBLY FRESH…and deliciously cooked, and I gotta say Peg Leg Pete’s, Flounders, and Crabs, We Got ‘Em, were our three most favorite places. Of course, we cooked at home a lot of the time, but that brings up a problem we hadn’t forseen. The nearest supermarket is in Gulf Breeze, a toll bridge away from Santa Rosa Island, but the GPS unit was very helpful, leading us to a Super Wal-Mart and a Winn Dixie with all their bounty. The toll was only a dollar…and I had stocked up on ones…just in case. Florida is FAMOUS for toll things.

President Nixon's Marine 1 at the Naval Aviation Museum

When we weren’t eating, we were sightseeing and immersing ourselves in the history and richness of Pensacola’s offerings. We toured the Naval Aviation Museum on the naval base, something NOBODY should miss if he has even the SLIGHTEST chance to see it, but you know me…history and all that. Fort Pickens had to have been my favorite foray into history. The ONLY fort in Florida not captured by the Confederates, it sat at the mouth to Pensacola Bay and effectively blocked the Confederacy’s efforts to launch a strike force from the mainland. Though a southerner, I’m extremely IFFY about which side I choose to root for.

Gun Emplacement at Ft. Pickens

My lady and I both LOVE history…and rooting around through ruins, and Ft. Pickens, EASILY a day trip, was immensely satisfying. Not only that…we got to meet an author and authority on both the Civil War and the role that fort played in its outcome. We bought TWO of his books in the Visitor Center! One thing amazes me. I had to work like hell to slog a couple of miles through sand along Pensacola Beach…and I was barefoot, in shorts and a light tshirt. Those guys did it in WOOL…and full battle packs! The more I learn about the Civil War…or as they call it down there, the War Between the States…the less I think I would have enjoyed…or tolerated…participating on EITHER side!

Inside Ft. Pickens

But Fort Pickens did its job well and prevented the rebels from unleashing unholy hell from captured sites on mainland Pensacola…almost certainly changing the course of the war in the deep south. Still…you know…part of me kind of hopes at least a FEW of those guys in blue got a chance to tear off their awful, itchy wool uniforms and run happily into the emerald-blue, crystal-clear, salty waters surrounding them. Hell…I DID…and it was a BLAST…but a little chilly.

First of all…and you gotta understand this…I’m not a RESOLUTION kind of guy. I live in a fluid world, my life a river not a succession of speed bumps, but on January first everybody starts talking about them…and asking you what yours is…like it’s going to make a huge amount of difference to ANYBODY. I’m slowly beginning to realize they’re mostly just nosey people who haven’t made up their minds yet or don’t have the mental wherewithal to do a whole lot more than annoy others.
When they ask, I usually tell them I’m resolving to work more diligently for world peace…like that’s EVER going to happen…but it shuts ‘em up, which was what I had in mind in the first place. Still…late at night with Angel at my feet, my lady at my side, the ceiling fan going full blast, Baxter unconscious somewhere out of sight, and delicious quiet everywhere, I tend to catalog my unfulfilled goals, and you know what? I don’t really have a whole lot of ‘em! I’ve been blessed with an amazingly INTERESTING life so far…and I know it.
Oh, yes, I’d LOVE to clean Gordo’s clock on the disc golf course, and to tell you the truth, I ALMOST did it yesterday. We TIED. For a couple of weeks he’s been beating the crap out of me, so it was incredibly fulfilling for me to see him sweat a little. Of course, my brother, the BIG PRO, wiped the floor with both of us, but Gordo and I learned long ago to IGNORE what HE’S doing…just like we ignore his obscenely low scores. Actually, if it weren’t for us, he wouldn’t be playing recreationally at all. I think he should THANK us because nobody else I know wants to play him for fun.
I guess I gotta start working on trying to DISCIPLINE Baxter, but that’s not really a resolution, more like a necessity. Our problem is…he’s SO adorable we tend to forgive him…WHATEVER he does. This evening when I walked into the bedroom, I found a mountain of sticks, leaves, and other stuff he had found out in the yard, and standing next to it, eyes dancing, tail wagging, he seemed to be saying, “LOOK WHAT I BROUGHT YOU! Isn’t it COOL?” I mean…how can you fault a little guy for something like that?
Of course, when I took it out, he followed me, and when I tossed it into the trash bin, I swear I thought I could see tears in his eyes. He’s a LONG way from quiet walks with me in the evening, and to tell you the truth, they’ll probably NEVER HAPPEN; those are for me and Angel…forever. Maybe…if he EVER calms down, I’ll think about a tandem lead and bring him out with us, but I said THINK…not do! If you knew him, you’d understand.
I’m happy, my lady’s happy, Angel’s happy…and Baxter’s NUTS! Who the hell knows what he considers happy, smiling like that all the time…whatever’s going on? We have a small folding barrier at the garage door, through which we come in from the supermarket. It keeps Baxter from charging at us and getting out, and when we’re at home…if he gets TOO obstreparous…we yell, “Time out!” and put him in that little enclosure.
Lately, he’s been doing it all by himself when he gets too off the wall, but you know…if you can figure out a way IN, you can also figure out a way OUT…and he has. He seems to think fifteen minutes is appropriate punishment, so he stays in there about that long and then calmly strides out. He’s also a big kisser…been watching Angel, I guess. We have a set of “doggie stairs” we set up next to the bed. Our bed is REALLY high, way beyond jumping up on, but when the stairs are in place, it’s constant running up, kissing, cutting up a little, then running back down.
When I’m trying to watch TV in the bedroom and Baxter’s doing his thing, I yell for my lady to come get him down and take the stairs away, but when his route up is gone, he just kind of SITS there staring at me with the saddest look on his face. When Angel’s curled up at the foot of the bed, the ceiling fan’s going, and my electric blanket’s on 1 or 2, I try to ignore him and go to sleep, but if I EVER wake up during the night, he’s STILL down there like one of those Chinese dog statues…just looking up at Shangri La, the forbidden territory. I TOLD you he was cute!
Okay…back to resolutions…I’m a writer who LOVES writing but HATES all the bullshit imbedded in publishing, and editors are WAY UP at the top of my list. You gotta explain EVERYTHING to them, and sometimes…I swear to God…it seems like they haven’t even READ the book they’re editing. They ask, “Why did you say this?” and when I explain it, they say, “Okay…that’s nice.” NICE? But they didn’t understand until I told them? What the hell’s going on here?
I’ve since learned it’s not about QUALITY but MONEY…what will make a bundle and what won’t…and it seems to me I’m kind of on the PUNY end of that equation, at least to those people who publish things. A couple of years ago I told my lady how I felt about all of this, and she said, “You like to write…so write; forget about publishing. Do what you LIKE!” She’s a wise woman and wonderful; I would die for her if I had to…and there was no other way of saving her.
Happily, I wrote like hell…six novels, total…but when I wrote “The Assassin’s Wife,” things changed. I really liked what I had written about Rose, the assassin’s wife, but I made the HUGE mistake of showing it to her. I left the printouts with her in the den and returned to my computer man-space…only hoping for approval, but in a couple of minutes, she invaded my sanctuary. “This is GOOD,” she said. “You GOTTA get this published!” It was a classic OH, SHIT moment.
These days she’s unbelievably interested in what I’m writing. I keep feeding her snippets from time to time…but she LOVES them, too! And…she’s an incredibly smart woman, an ICU nurse with an impeccable scholatic history and a keen eye for good literature…and husbands, I hope. So…it’s come to this. I have to jump back into the meat grinder again, a world peopled by cynics, greed, and diffidence…a scary and predictably frustrating world.
So…what with the new year and all…I’m gonna do it, God help me; it’s my New Year’s resolution…to jump back into the razor-studded maze I hate, mostly to preserve PEACE in my own, personal haven. To tell you the truth, HER liking what I’ve written is enough, but she seems to want more…mostly for ME. She seems to think I’m worth it, and even though she’s slowly pushing me toward the horror I despise, I’m going to roll with it. They never really scared me you know, mostly only pissed me off.
I wrote something somebody I love liked a lot, and as I said years ago on a dreary, rainy January day in Orange, Texas…for better or worse. I’m gonna give it a shot and try to publish “Demon Moss,” set in Louisiana in the nineteen-fifties, and from what I’ve seen on this blog, you guys seem to LOVE stuff about Louisiana. Pray God the rest of the world agrees…and pray God those AWFUL people in the publishing industry agree, too.
I’d be perfectly happy to go on writing and never publishing again, but…you know…my lady, Angel, Baxter, and all that…gotta keep peace at home when you can. I’ll keep you posted.

You guys out there from other places need to understand Thanksgiving. It’s when family you haven’t seen for ages and friends you only rarely see gather around a bountiful table and FEAST…after a heartfelt prayer. Lately, my Mom has been ailing, so I decided my lady and I should cook dinner for her…and it’s ALMOST done.
The only thing left to do is THE TURKEY; I mean…you GOTTA DO IT. Thanksgiving without a turkey is just another big meal. We made dirty rice, green bean casserole, and oyster dressing…not so easy these days since the oil spill…not so cheap either.  Everybody wanted candied yams, which I don’t PARTICULARLY enjoy but made anyway…along with broccoli and cauliflower au gratin, and pecan pie.  To make the yams more interesting, I soaked the raisins in dark rum.  They’re wonderful, but the yams are…you know…YAMS.
Tomorrow morning in the wee hours when my lady is fast asleep at my side and Angel pretty much the same at my feet, I gotta get up, wrap in a heavy robe, season a HUMONGOUS bird, and throw it into the oven. Then…I ASSURE you…I plan to crawl back into my spot, kick the electric blanket up to 3 or 4, and float away into dreams. I mean…WHY NOT? We got all kinds of stuff like smoke and fire alarms…and one neighbor who gets up BEFORE the glint of dawn. The house won’t burn down…not with Angel and that neighbor on the watch.
I figure it’ll take about four hours to do the deed, so that should make it ALMOST DONE when I finally wake up again…but I tucked in an ESCAPE CLAUSE. I’m sort of braising it…always tender, always JUICY, so even if I sleep a little longer than I wanted to it should be just about right. Then all I have to do is take the bird out, let it rest and make giblet gravy. To tell the truth, I use those little gravy packets you find at the supermarket and use pan drippings for the liquid.  Purists may object, but what the hell…it’s DELICIOUS!
So…whatever you’re doing, wherever you are, even if you’ve never had a Thanksgiving, I want to wish you a happy one.  Things are kind of puny in this country lately, but life is short and troubles of one sort or another will be with us forever.  Our Creator is always up there in majesty and love…and He should be thanked, even when things get dicey…and we, at least, always make it a particular point to do so in late November.  So…HAPPY THANKSGIVING, Guys…and pray my turkey turns out okay.  At least, I KNOW the cranberry sauce is good.  I tasted it…the oyster dressing, too!  Now…where did I put my electric knife?

The Ceiling in the Old Louisiana State Capitol

I’m gonna do it again…even though I’m not completely sure why…you know, take a shot at getting another novel published? I thought I was safe. After Dawn on Earth, I wrote a sequel…which I like because I think it’s good, but I don’t think it will ever see the light of day. Nobody’s interested…well, maybe a couple of people I’ve talked to, but far too few to give Kukulkan, the sequel, any sort of hope for life.
Dawn on Earth was really kind of an experiment, timid steps into an unfamiliar world. My brother told me it would be a chance to learn something, and I learned a lot. The problem was…I didn’t like what I learned. You see, GAZILLIONS of people write books every year; agents and publishing houses are drowning in them. They’re basically in it to make money…there’s nothing wrong with that, but new authors are considered an unnecessary risk. Actually it seems more like they consider us unnecessary…period.
They turn to established authors while the rest of us sort of languish, but the most painful part is never even getting a chance to rise or fall…or having ANYBODY read what you’ve written. Of course, your family and friends LOVE your book…but that’s treacherous territory; don’t listen to them. It’s all wrapped up in love and devotion, maybe even a secret conceit because they can brag they actually KNOW an author…however unsuccessful. It’s tricky ground, slippery, too.
Dawn rose for a while, but then it leveled off. I got lots of advice about advertising, getting the word out, hiring a publicist, etc. but it didn’t FEEL honest, only sort of dirty. Believe me, there’s a lot of dirt in this business, but personal honor is important to me, EXTREMELY important, so I said no. Actually, the only advice I took was to establish this blog. At first it was a whim, but it turned out to be too much fun to abandon. Maybe I was naive…and I consider that a quality, something I don’t intend to ever lose, even if it costs me my writing career. It keeps the mind fresh and the soul hopeful.
When I told my lady how I felt about it all, what she said astounded me. “Well, you enjoy writing…don’t worry about it…WRITE!” And I did; I wrote like hell…in my man-space at my desktop. I finished Kukulkan, then switched my sights to my Louisiana and away from sci-fi to mystery. Any of you who’ve read my posts know how much I love my home state, its people, its music, its cuisine, even its haunted memories, and I thought if I were writing for NOBODY, I’d just as soon write about something I enjoyed.
Actually, I’ve written four novels since then, happily typing away, revising, improving, getting things JUST RIGHT, but when I got into my latest, The Assassin’s Wife, I made a BIG mistake…I let her read some of it. I thought she’d be entertained, but she wasn’t. She got MAD. “You’ve GOT to get this published,” she announced. “It’s GOOD! I’ll never forgive you if you don’t.” That clearly wasn’t what I was aiming for.
I was comfortable and happy here in my little room at my ergonomic keyboard, writing stuff I KNEW would never make it out, but she was insistent. I ignored her for a while, but you know…endlessly having to answer the question, “WHY NOT?” I sent the manuscript to people I knew who were discriminating and NEVER liked anything, half hoping they would support my point of view…but they didn’t. THEY AGREED WITH HER, dammit, and I began to realize my boat was taking on a lot of water.
It’s easy for them. They don’t have to go through all those hoops, all those obstacles and rejections, all that disappointment. They think this whole system is FAIR! They liked what they read and felt it should be published…like I could snap my fingers and magically make it so. Turns out, they were even more naive than me. I kept telling them about Emily Dickensen and her way of looking at things, but they pretty much dissed my argument. They don’t revere Emily nearly as much as I do.

Bust of Huey Long in the Old State Capitol

The Assassin’s Wife is LOOSELY based on the assassination of Huey Long and set about thirty years later. There are a lot of screwy things about that event, conclusions that don’t really make sense, and I enjoyed revisiting and challenging them. Sorry, but I’m not going to get into them here. If you’re interested, you’ll have to buy the book or get it on Kindle…if it ever makes it out into the civilized world.
By far, I was most fascinated with the IMPACT that event has had on a lot of people living here, Long devotees, and Long HATERS, even those who weren’t around in those days but remain curious about what REALLY happened. A guy, a doctor, walked up to Huey Long and either punched him in the mouth or shot him and was levelled by a fusillade of bullets, so many nobody has ever been able to determine the actual count. The presumed assassin, Carl Austin Weiss, was pulverized on the spot, and Huey died several days later.
Actually, Weiss has never been formally charged with the crime, and a lot of people think he just walked up unarmed, socked the hell out of Huey, and they both fell in a barrage of bullets and ricochets. The marble hall outside the governer’s office in Baton Rouge is STILL pockmarked with bullet holes, those marble slabs not so torn up they had to be replaced. Now, all of the principals are dead, but that hasn’t stopped the post-mortem…and it kind of looks like those who say Weiss was only guilty of anger and a good punch might be right after all.

Carl Weiss' Pistol...in the Old State Capitol

Of course, you know me. I got all interested in what happened to his family after that, how they lived, what they went through as relatives of a PRESUMED assassin, and that’s basically what The Assassin’s Wife is all about. My heroine, Cassandra Lancon, who prefers to be called Casey…mostly because she HATES Cassandra and thinks Casey is a better name for an ex cop…or an active detective. She’s a little headstrong, often unsure of herself, but smart as a whip, and she gets the job done in this novel.
So now it begins…begging an agent to notice me…standing back in that field of daffodils…hoping SOMEBODY will find my novel worthy of a little time out there in the confusing and notoriously catty world of publishing. This one’s NOT going the way of Dawn…even if I NEVER get to sleep in our bedroom with my lady again! I know it’s gonna be messy, but I don’t really have a choice. Say a prayer. Angel just walked in, all happy and showering me with kisses. Maybe SHE’LL sleep with me in the guest bedroom. It’s gonna be a cold and lonely winter.