Bar opening

Completely unrelated to my writing, my husband and I are waiting on the final permit from the parish so our bar in Harvey, the Last Stand, can open. I have always wanted to own a bar, and it is pretty exciting that it is finally happening.

My husband has put so much work into this bar. It needed a total renovation, and he basically started from scratch. When I had my car accident, the entire thing was put on hold for half a year. When I was finally able to move around again, he was able to be gone for short periods of time, and worked as much as he could. Now he is finally finished, and if we can hurdle the plethora of red tape it takes to get anything accomplished in Jefferson Parish, we will finally open.

When Gumbo Justice comes out, I'm thinking of hosting a book release party there. I'm also thinking of starting a writer's group or a book group out of the bar. I'll have to see how it goes.

Hurricane season in New Orleans

Last night we had tremendous storms in the New Orleans and southeast Louisiana area. Thunder so loud it woke me up, had me sitting up in bed making sure it wasn't the train sound of a tornado I've heard so much about. It wasn't, but with hurricane season right around the corner again, and with the forecasters predicting another bad one, I started thinking about the last big hurricane around here, Katrina.

I haven't thought about Katrina too much. When I do, I think of the businesses here that didn't return, friends who have moved away, the neighborhoods that have still not recovered.

This time I started thinking about Katrina changed us. Not just my family, but pretty much everyone I know. I recall being stuck in a hotel, a very nice one in Houston, 24 steps away from the Galleria, and fretting each day because we didn't know if they were going to continue to extend our stay. The hotel was booked, and we stayed for two weeks. I think about how for several days we had no idea if our house was okay, if the strays that lived in our yard survived, if our fish were okay.

We were lucky. Our house had minor roof damage, the animals survived, the cars were okay. For days, though, my husband couldn't work. He was a contractor, so work would abound eventually, but for a while, there were no supplies to be had, nothing was open, no way to start the recovery.

Without his income, we were in a pickle. I still got my pay, but we are a two income family for a reason. We applied for FEMA money, the $2000 everyone got, and were declined. No reasonable explanation, except maybe I applied too early and they weren't giving the money out yet. I applied for Red Cross money, which we did receive. I also applied for and received Food Stamps. I guess it should have been humiliating using the Louisiana debit card they give you from the state to purchase food, but at the time we needed it.

I had never thought in this life I would need food stamps. I work, I'm a lawyer, I have always paid my own way. But there were people who made more money than me, professional people, people who also worked and always paid their own way, who needed the boost from the state to make ends meet until the recovery began.

I had a boss once who said most people are one paycheck away from living on the street. I never thought about it too much until Katrina hit. But she was right. I can only imagine what happened to those people who didn't have at least one income to rely on while they were evacuated.

Angel

I am still in the midst of re-writing Bernie Angel, and am torn between the titles Angel Hunt, or Angel Trap. Both are applicable, but trying to determine which one sounds the most like a catchy movie title is the problem.

The rewrite is not coming along as fast as I had hoped, mainly because I had a significant amount of rewriting to do. I thought my original was fine, good even. I paid for two critiques, being new to this type of work. One was much kinder than the other, although both noted two problems that I hadn't seen. (My husband, strangely enough, had seen one of them.)

I did an initial rewrite, changing just the two issues both professionals had noted. They were easy fixes. Then I started thinking about the harsher critique, and realized a lot of what he said was true. While I didn't agree with every point he made, I agreed with the major ones. So I had to rethink some key issues, and how some key characters interacted.

I like constructive criticism. There is little point in writing if it's going to turn out to be crap, and if I write something nobody gets, I would like to do my best to make sure they get it.

Gumbo Justice

Gumbo Justice is scheduled to come out in June, in time for the Las Vegas writer's conference I am attending. I can't wait until the cover comes out, so I can see what all my hard work is going to finally look like. I posted the first chapter on the website, www.gumbojustice.net, and hopefully will have additional information to post as it gets closer to the release date. I have been doing a few promotional things, but will be gearing up to do more soon.

I have also been rewriting the Bernie Angel screenplay. I rewrote Gumbo Justice so many times before I was satisfied with how it turned out, and even now I hate to re-read because I can't read anything I've written without thinking I can improve on it at least by one word or sentence or phrasing something a different way. When Bernie Angel is finished for good, I will post the first scene or two for feedback.

In any event, I hope everyone has as much fun reading Gumbo Justice as I did writing it.

I posted the first chapter of Gumbo Justice on the website at www.gumbojustice.net. I am still waiting on the official release date, but from the looks of things, my novel is the next one on the schedule for my publisher.

I am also doing the finishing touches on Bernie Angel before I submit it. I have to figure out what to work on when Bernie is finished for good. I would like to try another screenplay, I think, but do need to catch up on Gumbo 2.

I have been spending waaaay too much time on Facebook lately, and think I'll have to set a schedule so I'm not checking it constantly. It is a lot of fun to catch up with old friends, though, and to see what everyone is up to.

Keeping busy

I've been relatively busy lately, between working on my actual work, and writing.

I actually enjoy having real work to do. For months no new cases were assigned to me because of my car wreck, and work that came due was reassigned to other people. While I definitely appreciated it, I am ready to work on things that require less of my imagination and are more fact based.

I am still working on Bernie Angel. After letting the screenplay stew for a while, I thought of several ways to make it better, and have it better structures. I'm always trying to get the absolute most dramatic moment in the scene, or the most tension, and sometimes that means scrapping a scene and creating an entirely new one.

I am also contemplating a screenplay on a work I had intended to write as a novel, and actually had started as a novel, but might play better on the big (or little) screen.

I am fine tuning Gumbo Justice, and working on the follow up as well. Sometimes I get stuck on a single aspect of a story and can't move forward for weeks. When that happens, I pick up something else to work on until I can think my way through it. That's kind of what happened on the follow up to Gumbo, although I've since worked out the issue.

Hopefully I'm not spreading myself too thin. I'm also just getting back on feet literally, able to walk with a walker (somewhat like Frankenstein, but it's still walking), and precariously with a cane. I was hoping I could find a cane with a sword, one where the cane AND the sword were actually functional, but I don't think I can. I wouldn't mind a cane with built-in pistol. That would be killer--again, literally.

Gumbo Justice and Bernie Angel

I am waiting anxiously for my publisher to decide the release date for Gumbo Justice. There is so much involved in promoting a novel it is unbelievable. For new writers, it can be daunting. Luckily, Gumbo was pushed back because of my car wreck, so I have a little more time to learn to navigate the waters.

I have also been working on Bernie, and still do not have a title. Titles are the hardest thing for me. I don't want to settle for something, I want it to be unique, I want it to not sound even vaguely like something that has been done before, and I want it to be accurate. I hate titles that don't match the book or movie, or worse, have absolutely nothing to do with it. The title should give a clue about the work, and should lure the audience into wanting to read the book or see the picture.

I have been doing major rewriting to Bernie. One, to give one of my secondary characters a better story, and two, my ending needed reworking. The first ending wasn't exciting enough, the second had a flaw in that my hero didn't save herself. I wanted something a little different, but when you're new to the game you can't break the rules. It makes the people with the checkbook think you don't know the rules, and that's a problem.

When I'm finished Bernie, I'm thinking of entering her in a few screenwriting contests before trying to sell her. Selling is also a daunting task, more work than the writing, in my opinion.