For the first time since July 2019 (when I went to NECON), I boarded an airplane. I can’t say it’s the first time I was at an airport since then because I had to make a few trips to pick people up and drop others off last summer. On those occasions, though, I only made it inside the terminal once, and even then it was for less than a minute.
My wife and I flew to SFO to spend Easter with our daughter and her family, which includes our two grandchildren, none of whom we’d seen since last October. Since we’ve been staying out of the public for most of the pandemic, it felt a little unsettling to be among so many people, especially bottled up with a couple of hundred of them on an airplane. Flight or Fright, indeed. I was hoping we wouldn’t encounter one of those jerks who insist on causing a disruption, thereby delaying our flight, but that didn’t happen. People were pretty much compliant, except for the guy on the return flight who stared at Fox News on his inflight monitor as if he were a character from Clockwork Orange with his eyes held open the whole flight. His mask was under his chin for much of the flight, and no one gave him any grief for it. I’d like to blame him for the cold I caught, but that was probably courtesy of my grandson, who was sniffling and coughing the morning we left.
It was good to get away and visit family, though. Breathe some fresh northern California air. Our daughter lives a little inland from San Francisco and Berkeley, so we were able to do a little hiking in the fields and hills nearby. Mostly, though, we conjured up meals, played cards and other games, played with the grandkids and visited.
Recent short story acceptance: “Something Strange” will appear in the Bouchercon anthology, to be published in September.
Coming soon:
- “Kane’s Theory” will appear in Low Down Dirty Vote, Volume III: The Color of My Vote in May
- “Date Night” will be in Picnic in the Graveyard from Cemetery Gates Media
- “Kane’s Alibi” will be in The Book of Extraordinary Femme Fatale Stories in July
- “Double Play” will be in Summer Bludgeon: An Unsettling Reads Anthology, appropriately enough, this summer
My rewatch of The Shield continues. I just started season five. I’m also watching the final season of Better Call Saul, which is as good as ever. I enjoyed Hugh Laurie’s adaptation of Agatha Christie’s Why Didn’t They Ask Evans? I hope he does more like this. I have only two episodes left of the final season of Killing Eve.
The best thing I’ve seen lately, though, is Severance, which turned out to be quite different from what I expected. Best seen knowing very little about it, other than the fact that it has Christopher Walken in a supporting role, as well as John Turturro and Patricia Arquette. Britt Lower is a standout, and the final episode of the first season is a case study in creating suspense. I was shaking when it was over and I can’t wait for season two.
We watched the director’s edition of Star Trek: The Motion Picture and then the first two TNG movies. The only other film we’ve watched recently—one that I hesitate to even mention—is The Bubble, which was not very good at all. Only a copious amount of wine got us to the end.
I finished Corrections in Ink: A Memoir by Keri Blakinger on the return flight. Ms Blakinger was a reporter for the Houston Chronicle who first came to my attention when she covered a chemical factory fire in the wake of Hurricane Harvey. I’ve been following her reporting ever since, mostly having to do with prison issues. She knows whereof she writes, having spent some time in prison herself, which is mostly what this book is about—how she ended up there, what she experienced and how she turned things around afterward. I’m tempted to call it “Orange Is the New Blakinger,” but it stands on its own, even though she herself mentions the book OITNB a couple of times.
We also finished Wish You Were Here by Jodi Picoult, a full-on pandemic novel that has an interesting twist. We liked her writing enough that I grabbed another one, so we are now in the beginning pages of Vanishing Acts, where the twist is revealed early on.
I have a couple of podcast interviews lined up in the near future, so stay tuned for links to those when they’re done and posted. I expect there’ll be more of them as the publication date for Stephen King: A Complete Exploration of his Work, Life and Influences draws nigh.
