It’s been a while. Lots of water under the bridge in the past few months but, more importantly, lots of water in front of the beach house where we spent the last week. For nearly 20 years, my wife and I have been vacationing in a little community on the Gulf Coast called Surfside Beach. It’s down the coast from Galveston and is much quieter than that island city. Not nearly as many amenities, but we bring what we need and enjoy the peace and quiet.
This year we arrived on Memorial Day afternoon, which was a very busy time in Surfside Beach. It’s one of the few places I know where people are allowed to drive and park on the beach and on that Monday it was wall-to-wall cars. The day before had been so busy they had to close access to the beach completely. However, we didn’t need to get on the beach—our rental house faces the water with a dune between us and the gulf to provide some degree of privacy. (The dune was posted with a sign that said “Rattlesnake nesting area.” I think I’ll get one of those for our front lawn.) There’s a restaurant nearby that we patronized a few times, but the meals we cooked for ourselves were our favorites.
We couldn’t have asked for better weather. It was in the low-80s most of the week, with low humidity and a near-constant breeze coming off the water, so we were able to sit outside most of the time. The house has two decks; the upper deck provides decent shade to the lower one, although we had to keep shifting position during the day to avoid the sun. (I apparently didn’t do a very good job of that, as I sunburned my shins, presumably from sunlight that crept between the board of the upper deck.) Also, there were no mosquitos, which were the bane of our previous trip to Surfside Beach. It only rained a couple of times, briefly, so, yeah, perfect. We celebrated my birthday on Friday and enjoyed the full “strawberry” moon on the weekend before packing it in to return to reality on Monday. I find the constant sound of the surf to be one of the most relaxing things on earth.
Another of the unlauded joys of vacation rentals is finding books on the shelves that I might not ordinarily read. I read a total of six novels during the week, four of them books I discovered on the shelf. (For some reason, there are quite a number of Dutch translations in this house!) I did absolutely no writing, though. A total break.
However, that doesn’t mean things aren’t moving along on the writing front. My essay “Facing Reality” appeared this week on Something is Going to Happen from Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine in conjunction with the release of my story “His Father’s Son,” which will be in the July/August issue of EQMM, which goes on sale very soon. A couple of other recent short story publications:
- The River Heights Ripper, Black Cat Weekly #84, April 2023
- Crocodile Tears, More Groovy Gumshoes, Down and Out Books, April 2023
I was also gratified to learn that Stephen King: A Complete Exploration of His Work, Life, and Influences made the short list of the Locus Awards. The winner will be announced on June 24. I first read Locus magazine in about 1980. Back then, I would never have imagined that things I wrote would be reviewed in that august publication, so this nomination is very cool.
We’ve watched a number of documentaries recently: Still: A Michael J. Fox Movie, Gordon Lightfoot: If You Could See Me Now, Bowie: Moonage Dream and Never Surrender. The latter celebrates the 20th anniversary of the quasi-Star Trek film, Galaxy Quest. My wife had never seen that film, so we watched it first. It still holds up as one of the funniest science fiction movies ever, and the documentary is definitely worth checking out. In the feature film category, we enjoyed A Man Called Otto, Where the Crawdads Sing, Juniper, 80 for Brady and Tetris, the latter being a surprisingly excellent espionage film.
I enjoyed the second season of Perry Mason and am sad to hear it has been canceled. I binged through all four seasons of Succession. A difficult series in that every character is reprehensible, but it’s still compelling TV. I thought the final season of Barry lost its way a bit in the middle, but the ending was satisfying. Beef was weird, but I’m glad I watched it. We loved The Diplomat and can’t wait for the second season. I also fully enjoyed Rabbit Hole and The Night Agent, as well as Black Butterflies. Manifest wrapped up in a satisfying manner and it was good of Netflix to give it a second life after it was canceled after the second season. It’s a big mythology series with spiritual overtones that sometimes grated on me. The finale had shades of Lost (even a smoke monster!) but the resolution was different from that series. I liked Beyond Paradise, a slightly darker series than Death in Paradise. I’m currently in the middle of season 2 of From.
While we were in Surfside Beach, we did something we almost never do, which is turn on the TV. After flipping through a lot of dreck, we settled on MeTV and watched episodes of M*A*S*H, Andy Griffith, The Beverly Hillbillies, Green Acres and All in the Family. Only the latter didn’t really hold up all that well. Archie is a lot to take and the plot of one episode was so painfully awkward we stopped watching. We also found the 1941 move Man-Made Monster, starring Lon Chaney, Jr., on Svengoolie, which kept us entertained.
My wife thoroughly enjoyed Fairy Tale, so I followed that up with Billy Summers and Bag of Bones. I often cite “BoB” as one of my favorite King novels and this reread really brought that home to me again. It’s an amazingly complex and lovely novel. Then we read Forever Home by Graham Norton and are currently reading The Enigma of Garlic by Alexander McCall Smith. I also read King’s new one, Holly, and will probably read it again before I review it.
My vacation book binge included Where I End by Sophie White, Redemption by David Baldacci, Enemy of the State by Kyle Mills, The Sleeping Beauty Killer by Mary Higgins Clark & Alafair Burke, Where Are You Now? by Mary Higgins Clark and Becoming the Boogeyman by Richard Chizmar. The middle four were “found” novels. I also finished Look Both Ways by Linwood Barclay and have his new one on deck.
