The Detective's Office Takes Off

The detective's office has languished for a long time, waiting for the convergence of resources and time. Race day weekend, as we Hoosiers call it, proved to be the magic date and the project finally has started rolling. Here's a little before picture to set the stage. I hope you'll pardon my camera's desperate attempt to adjust to the bright desk lamp, but I think you can see that over the months the office has become a depository for all things junk. I've collected disused keyboards, dead cell phones, broken laptops, extra pads of paper, and the tools for actually painting the place in an attempt to recreate an episode of Horders, but that'll be changing soon enough.

Scene two, it's Saturday morning and a good deal of the junk has moved on. Thanks to Kelly's hard work the painter's tape has been applied and my brother helped move all the heavy furniture so we could get to the walls. The night before work began the hall was so crammed with stuff from the office that late night trips to the bathroom became a treacherous affair. First thing in the morning we tuned in some peppy music and got to work.

Drop cloths, or old blankets, in pace and ready to paint when we encountered our first problem. We purchased the paint for this project late in the fall, with the thought that if the weather allowed we'd paint before winter started. Unfortunately, we didn't get to painting and the paint cans spent the winter months in the garage where one can froze. The result, paint that resembled cottage cheese and never was going to mix properly. I was off to the hardware store to buy a replacement can on the Saturday mid-morning before the Indy 500. As you can guess, it was a harrowing trip. After lunch and a Valium to bring me down from dealing with traffic, we got started.

To my surprise, we had the top half of the room painted in no time. The color is hummus, but to me it looks more like butter. You might be asking what kind of noir detective paints his office hummus or butter, well the idea was to replicate the cigarette smoke-stained plaster you might find in a downtown LA office that had another life before the neighborhood went sour and a two-bit gumshoe moved in. I think the color does a pretty good job, and I'm not willing to do painting effects or glazes to make a more accurate imitation. You can also see the beginning of the faux wainscoting in orchard green and it reminded me of the felt on a pool table, perfect for our detective.

Try to ignore the dust on the camera lens, or as the paranormal investigators would call them, orbs. Wainscoting first coat done as the sun started heading for the horizon. We removed the painter's tape before calling the day finished, but I didn't think that warranted photographs. The race day agenda will include touch-up of the walls, correcting paint lines where needed, painting the baseboard and window sill, and cutting the chair rail. Still to come is replacing the ceiling fan and wall switch with something appropriate, installing the chair rail, and generally putting the furniture back in order. More updates and photos soon, in the meantime I'll have an exorcist look at my camera.

Of February and Gall Bladders

You might have noticed a drop in the frequency of my blog posts. Well, to be honest, February has been a bit of a wash for me. You see, it started with a trip to the emergency room followed by a three-day hospital stay, and a long recovery due to emergency gall bladder surgery. I'm all for being special, but not when that means having the "worst looking gall bladder" your doctor has ever seen.

The whole thing started the night of the Super Bowl. We had a few friends over, I made pulled pork, and things went just fine. That night, after clearing away all the dishes we turned in, expecting nothing more than being a little tired on Monday morning. Instead, as I lay in bed, I started having cramps.

The cramps worsened throughout the evening and eventually I became nauseous, so I thought I'd probably gotten the stomach flu. One of our friends who'd came to watch the game had recently gotten over a stomach illness and it didn't seem impossible that I'd picked up the same bug. So, I moved to the couch and turned on ESPN to watch the endless drivel and re-imagining of the season ender while I weathered the symptoms. The only problem was, the symptoms didn't get  better - they worsened.

By midnight I'd called off work, I spent Monday alternating between lying awake in bed and soaking in a hot tub (seemed to be the only thing that would dull the pain). Finally, at seven thirty Monday evening, I gave in and asked Kelly to drive me to the emergency room where I was probed, prodded, tested, and finally diagnosed as needing to have my gall bladder removed.

I'm home again now, and slowly getting back to normal. Still moving a little slowly and it'll be a long time before I'm doing any vigorous exercise, but I'm recovering and as my energy returns I'll be back to publishing with more regularity. So, just hold tight!

February Update

Dear Reader,


Months have passed since we last spoke and I hope they've all went well for you. Here's hoping January brought a happy New Year and Valentines a love to see you through the dreary cold of March and into springtime's bliss. Looking back at the blog I see that I posted a December update but nothing since - my apologies for being so incommunicative! I will strive to correct the situation immediately.

Steady progress is being made on the latest novel, though I have to admit the thing is stubborn. At ninety thousand words the harsh realization that a good amount of pruning will be required has settled in. Added to that, the work itself has become thicker - first edits are always that way for me, a critical eye sieving through the initial creative tailings to find the worthy material and discard the waste. In the case of the current novel there have been some fairly hefty plot changes which have required a lot of in-depth editing just to get out of the first draft stage. Next comes what I like to call "the bloodying up" of the document - a read-aloud with a red pen in hand. Usually a pen sacrifices itself on the altar of editing during this stage. It's sad and slow but a necessary process.

Time of Death is slated for release this September. Currently it's working through the shadowy halls of the publisher, going through whatever dark rituals are required to make it a book. Sometimes I think of Kevin Bacon pledging Omega Theta Pi in Animal House when I imagine what a book goes through to be released. I imagine hooded figures in candlelit rooms flogging the manuscript…thank you sir, may I have another. Regardless, somewhere out there the first installment of Mel Rush's adventures waits to be sprung on the public. Hopefully it will be to at least moderate acclaim!

Indiana in February is a gray and gloomy place. Even someone like me, who loves the whole winter scene, gets a little burned out on slate-gray skies and bare trees by this time of year. I find myself checking the bed where we planted lilies last fall, looking for the first signs of life pushing through the soil. It's an over-eager impulse since the last frost date for Indiana isn't until early May. Still, there's a fluttering in my heart each time I look out the window at the swath of soil we worked last year. I hope the squirrels haven't undone most of our work!

Long before the lilies come up, though, will be the 'official first rite of spring' - morel mushroom season. In Indiana the season kicks off right around my brother's birthday, a handy reminder for me to get my hiking boots and best stick ready to prowl the ravines and woodlands. I am absolutely no good at this outdoor activity, not that I'm any sort of woodsman per se. My father has returned from his mushrooming haunts with garbage bags full when the fates align and there's a good season. Myself, I'm lucky to see a single mushroom (in fact I think that's my record in recent years). Still, there's been a lot of snow this year; if the weather doesn't turn dry we might be in luck.

That's the way things are going at the moment. I will provide you further updates on the book's progress as September draws nearer and I hope to have my second manuscript ready for hard editing within the next month. Wish me luck!