My publisher has submitted my new novel for the Lambda Literary Awards!
In the LGBTQ+ Speculative Fiction category!!
I’m really thrilled.
Finalists aren’t announced until June 2027, but fingers crossed, gang!🌹

My publisher has submitted my new novel for the Lambda Literary Awards!
In the LGBTQ+ Speculative Fiction category!!
I’m really thrilled.
Finalists aren’t announced until June 2027, but fingers crossed, gang!🌹

Although I really did miss being in Charlotte last night, gang.
Still, it was so fun to get out of bed here at 6AM today and say a happy hello to all my many cats!
Even though they got along great with my mom, it was so clear to me that they were excited that things were back to normal this morning. They were all frisky as heck!
Oh, here’s something kind of exciting — I don’t know yet if it will really happen, but I hope it does!
One of my girlfriends who works at my favorite health & wellness store in town (I used to work there during the lockdowns), put in her 2 weeks notice while I was away, and I’m looking into taking over her hours!
It would be so cool to be back there, especially since I’m still friends with everyone who works there. Plus, the store is privately owned and only open a limited number of hours/days a week.
I had to leave there once the lockdowns were over, because I couldn’t afford to work retail back then. But now that I have Social Security and the money I inherited from my dad, I can afford it.
So we shall see!! It would certainly take care of this problem I’ve been having of feeling unbelievably isolated out here in the middle of nowhere since I retired…
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Okay!
This week, I have:
So it should be a fun week with a nice, even sort of pace.
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Other than that —
I have a TON of “here’s this’s'” that I accumulated while in Charlotte, NC!!
So let’s get started!!
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Most importantly, it seems that this past weekend was International “Bad Seeds Take Their Dogs Out” Weekend!!
On Saturday!
George Vjestica apparently has a tiny little dog named Gucci!!
And on Sunday!
Warren Ellis took his pups out to the woods!!
And here’s this, while we’re at it! Does it get better?? Lou Reed & the Velvet Underground! The sublime “Sunday Morning”, 1966!
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It’s time for Erica Verrillo’s fantastic (FREE) publishing calls-for-submissions and writing contest updates for October!!
Visit HERE! And then click on the various links for current updates.
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And the NYC LGBT Historic Sites Project is having an East Village Walking Tour for LGBTQ History Month!!
(You will notice that my old E.12th Street apartment is NOT part of the tour, but if you take the tour, please feel free to DEMAND that they stop at 511 E.12th Street anyway!! And honor all the LGBTQ cool shit that happened in my apartment!! Drugs! Booze! Sex! MUSIC!! Cigarettes!! Writing, writing, writing!! Thanking you in advance!!)
You can sign up for the tour HERE. It is $25.
“Discover LGBTQ history hidden in plain sight on this 90-minute expert-led walking tour of New York’s East Village. Celebrate LGBTQ History Month and explore places and people that made this neighborhood a center of LGBTQ art, activism, nightlife, and counterculture.
“Visit the former residences of poet Allen Ginsberg and lesbian activists Ellen Broidy, co-planner of the first NYC Pride March (1970), and Ernestine Eckstein, who was active in the LGBTQ rights movement in the pre-Stonewall years. See if you can hear the echos of dance music as we stand outside the site of The Loft, where David Mancuso hosted egalitarian underground house parties that influenced the city’s club scene. Share memories as we arrive at the former locations of nightclubs The Saint, with its legendary interior dome, and Pyramid Cocktail Lounge, where LGBTQ performers included Andy Warhol, John Waters, performance artist Ethyl Eichelberger, and more.”
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YES!! For some inexplicable reason, this is NOT on the tour!!
Punk bassist/guitarist Blaire N. Bitch, smoking in my bedroom at 4AM!!
Me with my band!
My best friend on Earth — the notoriously gay and now dearly departed from AIDS Paul Martin, in my bathtub!!
And here’s the front of 511 E.12th Street as it looks today. My apartment was the 3rd one up , on the left, with the little AC in the window (back then the fuses in the building were so old, you could not have such a thing as a working AC!! It would blow all the lights out in the building!) (I know this, because we tried it once!!)
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All righty!
Phyllis Stein gave us a scare over the weekend, saying she was basically done posting all her great Punk music photos to Instagram. (But last night, she posted again!!)
But here’s some great photos from when she was departing us–
David Jo and Richard Hell! At Max’s Kansas City, 1976!! (Photo by Bob Gruen)
David Jo with Cyrinda Fox (married for only one year, then they famously split up). At CBGBs, 1976, photo by Roberta Bayley.
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And here’s this!
Also from Phyllis Stein as she was pretending to depart us…
Johnny Thunders in NYC in 1973!!
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And a couple of Keith!!
Smoking backstage at Madison Square Garden in NYC in 1969!!!
Keith comments on Bob Dylan!! (I think he’s saying what we’re all thinking!!)
And how about this??
I might have posted it here before, but I just love it!!
(I would not have survived 1975 without these 2 guys!!)
Ronnie Wood and Keith Richards:
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A little bit more info about the upcoming Johnny Depp movie ,”Day Drinker”–
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AND!!
A bunch more great photos of Nick Cave!!
From Facebook! Oh No!!
Priceless!
Nick onstage twenty years ago in Paris!! Smoking!! Singing!! Facial hair!!
And a couple more from long ago…
I believe this was 1990, photo by Peter Walsh (?)
And this was possibly LA in 1990, photo by Jonathan Kirn (?)
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And whew!
That’s it!
Gotta finish the laundry here and then head to town because I am ABSOLUTELY out of cat food here!!!
Have a terrific Tuesday, wherever you are in the world, gang!
Thanks for visiting!
I love you guys. See ya!
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Let’s close with this!!
From yesterday!
Elvis Costello Unboxes ‘My Aim Is True’ 49th Anniversary Edition!
My mom and my cats got along great.
The house looks great.
It feels great to be home!!



Almost back home…

Having a cup of the complimentary coffee, hanging out in yet another cozy corner of the hotel with a faux fireplace!!🥰

It really is such a pretty hotel.
Anyway.
Waiting on my breakfast, that I will politely wolf down and then dash out the door to meet the Uber driver!
3 airports await today before I am back home.
I hope you’re having a great Monday so far, gang!
Thanks for visiting!🙋♀️🥰✈️
James Tabor brought in a bunch of books from his own home library today because he’s trying to downsize his collection of books.
They were for sale, but he had great prices.
Thursday evening, I got an alert from Amazon — a reminder to buy one of the books on my wishlist, but it was $45 and I didn’t want to buy such an expensive book before going out of town for the weekend.
Guess what??
James Tabor was selling his own copy of the same book for $15!! Mint condition!! So I bought it!☺️

This book is incredible. This edition is 22 years old, but it is a reprint from 1924!!
It’s amazing. It is also really heavy!🤣 600 pages. Can’t wait to carry it around the various airports tomorrow!😺📚✈️
Okay. Spoke to my mom when I got back to my room after dinner and she and the cats got along splendidly!!
I can’t wait to see everyone tomorrow— the cats and my mom. I missed all of them.💖
All righty. Goodnight everyone!! My Uber arrives early tomorrow morning. Gonna try to calm down now and rest.
DNA samples from one of the Talpiot tombs!! The samples were taken from the tomb in 2006, but the tomb is from 1st century Jerusalem (Talpiot neighborhood).
And a parting shot of the conference room🥰


Some of Dr. Tabor’s own collection, including ancient coins AND—
A crucifixion nail!
The Torah scroll is a couple hundred years old.






Waiting for the conference to get started here. Gorgeous morning, so I took a little walk.
Look what my terrace overlooks! You can’t see it from up above in my suite, because it is directly underneath it!



A beautiful park, a walking trail and a little pond!! And ducks!!
Okay. More later…🙋♀️
Good morning, gang! Happy Sunday!!
It’s 6:30AM here in North Carolina and here is a slightly different view of the full moon from my terrace just now!

The hotel doesn’t start serving breakfast until 8AM, so I’m just hanging out, getting a slow and easy start, and thinking about life.
And here’s something I remembered! I think I posted something to the blog on Thursday, about not being able to remember the name of the record store in Times Square, where I used to buy records all the time when I lived on W.45th Street.
Anyway— it was Disc-O-Mat!
“Disc•O•Mat in Times Square (located around 44th Street and Broadway) was a legendary, gritty New York City record store that served as a cultural hub for vinyl buyers, new wave, disco, and early hip-hop fans in the 1980s.”
🎉🎉🎉
I bought so many records there. Plus, records still only cost about $4 back then.
📓📚📄
I am really looking forward to this morning’s lecture, gang. Updates on the James ossuary! I cannot wait.
I think it’s still too soon to post about the things we went over yesterday. I think I have to wait until James Tabor makes it public. But I can at least say it was some more exciting news about certain ossuaries still in Talpiot (outside Jerusalem).
☕️☕️☕️
I’m going to jump in the shower now and then head down to the restaurant for the breakfast buffet!
But before I go, I want to share this thought.
At 6AM Friday morning— my mom was still asleep and I was already in the kitchen, feeding the cats.
I stepped out onto my kitchen porch to collect the food bowls from Tiki and Rasha, and in the darkness, a man’s voice calls out, “Good morning!”
It startled me a little. It was too dark to see anything. And the voice called out again.
This time I saw that it was the older gentleman across the road. He was on his front porch, waving his arms around so that I could see him.☺️
I called back to him, “Good morning!” And then he hurried over to me in the dark. Across his wet grass, across the road, up on to my curb in the dark —
I saw that he was barefoot! “Your feet must be freezing,” I said.
But he wanted to make sure we were still having our lunch date when I get back from the conference!
“October 1st?” he said.
And I happily agreed. October 1st. He was very excited.
And I keep thinking about how he ran across the wet lawn and across the road, barefoot, in the dark, just to make sure we were still having lunch.
It keeps making me smile.
What a nice man.
Okay! I’ll probably be back here at the break!
Meanwhile, enjoy your Sunday!!
Thanks for visiting! 🥐☕️☺️