Hoping it’s this kind of day!!!

Yes! An unlit Pall Mall (aka “fake Chesterfield”) with it’s filter mercilessly snapped off!!

And me, sitting at my desk!!

It means I’m focused and getting some writing done!!

(Me, not smoking at my desk, back in 2019!!)

You can tell this is an old photo because I don’t have gouges on my chin curtesy of my delightful cat!!

Meanwhile–

I was going to disturb you last night with the following happy update, but I decided to wait until this morning, when you were awake–

1954 Powder Blue Pickup reached #25 in Historical Erotica last night!!

The sale is indeed over today, and so the eBook no longer has “sales rankings”. (Darn it.)

However, I still have access to the sales reports and I want to continue to THANK YOU!! –because it keeps on selling!!!

Yay!!!

She is just being used as a visual emphasis. Not only is she too young to read yet, she’s way too young to read 1954 Powder Blue Pickup! Nevertheless, she’s still really happy because she knows it’s waiting for her in her happy future…

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Okay.

Things continue to be a little strange with my favorite 95-year-old Japanese man. His daughter texted me at his house yesterday, letting me know she was not going to be able to call him and will tell him, in person on Sunday, about his nurse being in a coma and near-death.

Meanwhile, we decided that it would be best coming from her, so I haven’t said anything to him. Still, he knows something is off. He knows he hasn’t seen the nurse in a while, that she’s been sick, but that’s about all he can process. He can’t even remember her name now.

I still get the feeling the daughter is planning to put him in a nursing home, but she hasn’t said anything to me about it.

I have sort of released my desire to somehow make everything go differently in this. It’s really the only way I can handle anything and still act like everything is okay when I’m around him.

Taking it the proverbial one day at a time. Just being in the here & now with him. And just being his friend. And when I gave him his little vodka cocktail yesterday, he told me again that he loved me and again, he said, “Thank you for showing me what a wonderful life I’ve had.”

And then he also added: “The spirit is more alive than the physical.”

So I think something’s up, but I have to just let life and/or death happen.

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All righty!

I don’t want to tarry here, because I want to finish writing that nearly-finished short story today.

So let’s get to the “here’s this’s”!

Here’s this!!

From the Franz Kafka Museum.

And I have to say that I have read everything he ever wrote, including every collection of letters he wrote that were posthumously published and which are all staggering and amazingly honest. And most of his stories and novels were published by his friends after he died (he was only 40 when he died from tuberculosis, and he was not a well-known writer yet). I just love this man’s beautifully neurotic mind; but the whole idea of anything being “Kafkaesque” did not come into being until long after he died. And we would not have ever known his work if his friends hadn’t stepped in and ignored his wishes at the end.

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And here’s this!

Sun Studios!! The birth place of rock & roll records!!

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And here’s this!!

Some rare finds, indeed!

Keith, smoking while holding a guitar!

From NYC 1975 — only a handful of weeks before I got to see the Rolling Stones onstage in Cleveland for the first time!!

And some other place, some other time (1988)!!

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Okay.

Nick Cave sent out another one of those Red Hand Files yesterday, wherein he answers many readers questions with “irreverent answers”! (I’m guessing he is hard at work on writing those new song lyrics and can’t really spend time right now on lengthy replies!!)

Anyway, this wasn’t necessarily my favorite question, but I identified with the reply a lot!!

Q: “On the song ‘Carnage’, there is a lyric ‘sitting on the balcony reading Flannery O’Connor with a pencil and a plan’, that really resonates with me. Now I am reading Flannery O’Connor. Any more recommendations?”

A: “If you are reading Flannery O’Connor, be sure to read her short story A Good Man is Hard to Find. If you enjoy Flannery O’Connor, read William Faulkner – As I Lay Dying is a great place to begin.”

I adore Flannery O’Connor!! And that short story is a really great one. A couple of years ago, while I was vacuuming, I noticed that on one of my bookshelves, Flannery O’Connor’s short story collection is right next to Nick Cave’s novel And the Ass Saw the Angel!! So I have never moved them apart!!

I also love William Faulkner and have read all his novels — although Sanctuary was sort of an intense one. (Oh, and if you’re new to the blog — back in 2001, my then novel-in-progress, The Curse of Our Profound Disorder, was a finalist in the William Faulkner Writing Competition in New Orleans. I was so thrilled by that!!!) Anyway.

Also from this morning: