eBay auctions of the tenth-anniversary edition of Lost Souls, my handmade traycased The Value of X, and a pretty blank journal are ending later today. Copies of The Lazarus Heart in my Big Testosterone Sale are still available too. For those readers who aren't eBay customers, thanks for your patience with these millions of announcements.

Three new eBay auctions posted: a tenth-anniversary deluxe edition of Lost Souls, a blank journal I think came out especially pretty, and, in a twist on the book covers I've been making, a traycased copy of The Value of X with my own artwork. There's still a little time left to bid on the book auctions, too, and some good deals there.

I just realized that lately I spend most of my days playing with dirt and plants, and most of my nights playing with paper, scissors, glue, glitter, jewels, and such. Obviously, I have achieved my near-lifelong ambition of regressing to age 5.

In other news, Peter Straub has selected my story "Pansu" for Fantastic Tales: American Stories of Terror and the Uncanny, which he's editing for the Library of America. The volume is due out in October 2009. (Because I am lazy, I just stole those two sentences from greygirlbeast, who also has a story in the book, and substituted my title.) I'm pleased by Peter's choice of "Pansu," as I'm pretty sure this is the first love the story has received since Camelot Books first released it as a chapbook -- no reviews that I can recall, no reprints except in my own collection -- and I do have a certain affection for it. As I wrote in my foreword to The Devil You Know, after a lot of difficult nonfiction pieces and fiction that was grim in every sense of the word, "Pansu" showed me that I could still thoroughly enjoy writing. Between this anthology and Small Beer's release of Second Line (the Value of X/D*U*C*K omnibus), this October is shaping up to be a big month for me.

Before I got up this morning, I lay in bed thinking about Paul Harvey, which led to thinking about Ray Stevens (there is a connection, though only my old chef at Cookies & Company in Athens is likely to get it), which led to thinking about Drawing Blood, because there was a piece of business in the novel about an employee of the Whirling Disk record store in Missing Mile who'd accidentally ordered something like fifty copies of Ray Stevens' Greatest Hits, and at the time this seemed hilarious to me. I still think it's pretty funny, but -- like many of the little in-jokes and cute references in Drawing Blood -- it is totally irrelevant to the story, and as I lay there, the idea came to me that every novelist starts out trying to create something that looks like the front of a beautiful tapestry and ends up creating something that looks -- at least to himself -- like the back of one. You, the reader, may see the carefully stitched horses and kings and Virgins and floral motifs. Or, if you don't like the book, you may not. Either way, you will never share my view, which is of all the messy, incoherent stitching on the back of the tapestry that is needed to create the design on the front. And the farther away I get, the messier it looks.

Anyway, I've worked that simile quite enough, and I am here to offer you news of a book, not to maunder about books in general. I'm happy to announce that Small Beer Press will be publishing a paperback "omnibus" edition of The Value of X and D*U*C*K, titled Second Line: Two Tales of Love and Cooking in New Orleans. (OK, much of D*U*C*K takes place outside New Orleans, but Two Tales of Love and Cooking in New Orleans and Opelousas would make for an unwieldy subtitle indeed.) "Second line," for anyone who doesn't know, is the New Orleans term for the crowd of revelers that follows a large parade, or for a smaller parade that usually takes place in a poor neighborhood, features brass bands, and often happens after a funeral, in order to celebrate the life of the deceased. There has been no actual death connected with the Liquor novels except the blessed passing of my relationship with Random House, but I think the title fits the book well, since TVoX and D*U*C*K are smaller works attached to the three "big" Liquor novels.

I am very excited about this project because it will make two books I like a lot more affordable and widely available, and also because I admire what Small Beer is doing and am pleased to be working with them. I believe their target publication date is October '09, so I'll have more on this as we get closer to that date. Sorry, I won't be touring or anything like that -- a book tour would be an utter impossibility for me right now -- but I do hope there will be some interesting interviews and other press for Second Line.

I promise I'll move on to another subject soon, but you have to realize that this religious thing is a huge deal for me right now. Anyway, a reader asked how my "journey to Catholicism" began. As best I can recall, it started with trying to write accurately about characters (the Stubbs family) who had varying degrees of Catholic faith. It soon became obvious to me that there was more going on in these characters' minds and hearts than I understood. I didn't agree with everything their faith made them do -- e.g. Mary Rose and Elmer Stubbs conspiring to split up the boys in The Value of X -- but I could see that it was valuable to them, valuable enough so that G-man could never quite turn loose of it even though he felt that the Church had rejected him and his life partner hated it. Things really began to crystallize when I started writing the short story "Bayou de la Mère," which was originally inspired by a late-night walk through St. Martinville, Louisiana during which Chris and I observed two different statues: a perfectly normal Virgin Mother near St. Martin de Tours Cathedral, and the seated, blank-eyed, (to me) extremely creepy Cajun heroine Evangeline in the old cemetery behind the cathedral. These statues merged in my mind and a tale began to ferment. I wrote to Doug Winter, who is something of an expert on such matters, asking him to recommend movies that contained creepy Catholic imagery. One of the movies he mentioned was Stigmata, which he said was a terrible movie but contained some good imagery. I thought it was an OK movie myself, but I wasn't as struck by the imagery as I was by the piece of Gnostic text that comes up again and again, purporting to be the words of Christ: "Lift a piece of wood and you will find me; split open a stone and I am there," or something very close to that.

This really resonated with me for some reason (and still does). Previously, I had only been to Mass twice in my life: once by accident, when I stumbled into the middle of one at Our Lady of Guadelupe on Rampart Street while attempting to deliver a petition to St. Expedite, and once for a friend's funeral. Now I began to wonder if there was something there for me besides research, and I started intermittently attending Masses at different Catholic churches all over the city. I didn't explore any religion other than Catholicism, because it is such a vital part of the founding and fabric of New Orleans that I knew it would be the one for me if any was. Eventually I got to Our Lady of Good Counsel -- mostly because they had (and have) late-afternoon Masses on weekends, which fit well with my schedule -- and immediately felt more comfortable and welcome there than I had anywhere else. I attended services there off and on for about five years. I also became much more serious about the St. Joseph altar tradition, which I had previously viewed as a kind of trick-or-treat for foodies and New Orleans culture vultures (both of which I am, of course).

So that's how it began. Although I've been preparing to be received into the Church since before Christmas, I think my decision was really only finalized a couple of weeks ago, when I was working on the St. Joseph altar. I realized I was proud of what I was doing there and ashamed of what I would do when I got home. Basically, I decided the way I was living was not good enough for me. Some core of will I didn't know I still had rose up within me, and I promised myself and the Powers That Be that after St. Joseph's Day I would stop abusing painkillers. The decision came in a form I can only call a thought-bolt: "Look, you can either keep fucking up and probably get a heroin habit and spiral into ghetto life and maybe destroy your family -- and if you're going to do that, there is really no reason to go ahead with your plans to join the Church -- or you can get your shit together RIGHT -- FUCKING -- NOW."

And I've pretty much had it together since then. Since that actual moment, it feels like, though I did write petitions at all the St. Joseph altars we visited asking him to help me find a way to live with pain without abusing drugs and hurting my family. And I don't know what the ultimate effects will be, but people who have no idea what I did over the weekend keep telling me that I look radiant, that the stress is gone from my face, and so forth. Part of this could be due to the drugs leaving my system. Yes, I am still in a lot of physical pain, and that's where Stephen King comes in, as he usually does if you look deeply enough into anything I do. I decided to reread Needful Things -- a novel that I admit gets somewhat goofy at points, but there was a moment in this particular reading of it valuable enough to compensate for any flaws, when the arthritis-crippled heroine throws away the supernatural cure and rejects its source:

Pain instantly clawed its way into her hands like some small and hungry animal ... but she knew even then that the pain was not as great as she had feared; nowhere near as great as she had feared.

I had no supernatural cure, just many bottles of various pills, but I knew it was true that when you are in chronic physical and/or emotional pain -- and especially when you get used to having at least some relief from it -- you become very frightened of its return, and the fear itself makes the pain worse. I suspect that Stephen King, also an addict, knows this too. I decided that, while I might still live in great pain, I would no longer live in terror of it or allow it to run my life. I knew from my own experiences and my conversations with Father Pat that faith would help me with this. My friend flemco wrote recently, "That's part of the fun of Atheism: I don't belong to a group. There is no throng of people backing up my lack of belief. We do not all meet once a week and trade stories. I am strong enough, by myself, without others or a deity, to remain resolute in my lack of belief." And I believe this to be true for him -- I've always been a little bit in awe of the guy -- but I have had to acknowledge that I am not strong enough by myself, or even with a happy marriage and good family relationships (which flemco also has).

That's all for now, and it looks like enough.

[Addendum: For any Catholics (or anyone else) who cares, my baptismal name is (of course) Joseph, and my confirmation name is Elizabeth, after a devoutly Catholic great-aunt of mine and also because it is my mother's middle name.]

William's situation is iffy. Our vet feels it's time for him to go, and this is a doctor I trust. However, William woke up seeming a little livelier this morning, ate some more ham, and isn't in pain, so Chris -- who's been working for the past five days and hasn't gotten to spend much time with William -- asked if we could try one more steroid shot/infusion of subcutaneous fluids and, if things aren't looking better by Thursday, do it then. I can't deny him those last two days with William, and of course I'm happy to have them myself. William has perked up before when the vet thought he was at death's door, so there's a chance it won't happen Thursday, but we've already had more time with him than we expected to when this began -- for which we are grateful.

Thanks for all the well-wishes. We appreciate them.

I was amused to read the following in officialgaiman:

A couple of odd FAQ mails came in accusing me of either lying or "jumping on the bandwagon"when I mentioned the other gay Neverwhere character. So I thought I'd point them to http://www.neilgaiman.com/journal/2003/06/questions-answered-neverwhere.asp. (Odd, because they didn't actually seem to be from readers of my stuff, but seemed to be from people who'd been led here from some sites where people were arguing about other things.) (Shrugs.)

I want to "jump on the bandwagon" too, so I'm announcing that Trevor and Zach in Drawing Blood, Andrew, Jay, Tran, Luke, Soren, and several more characters whose names I can't remember right now in Exquisite Corpse, Jared, Benny, and Frank in The Lazarus Heart, and Rickey and G-man in The Value of X and the Liquor books are gay. (I didn't include any characters from Lost Souls since most of the characters in that one seem to be of the Frank Booth orientation: "I'll fuck anything that MOOOOOOOOOOOOOVES!!!") I'll be happy to organize a press conference if anyone wishes to discuss these shocking revelations.

Bad high school English classes have given too many readers the idea that "theme" in literature is a ponderous concept, the sole province of Great Literature, something writers decide on before they write the first word of a novel. In truth, I think most stories, highbrow or otherwise, have a theme of some sort, and it's seldom a preconceived thing. It grows out of the story and the characters, and I believe few writers know what the themes of their novels are until the novels are finished, or at least well underway. Sometimes it doesn't become evident until years after you've written the damn thing.

In On Writing, Stephen King writes:

I don't believe any novelist, even one who's written forty-plus books, has too many thematic concerns; I have many interests, but only a few that are deep enough to power novels.

Of course I got to thinking about what my own "thematic concerns" might be, and I came up with a few I believe have run through my work over the years, regardless of how radically some readers may feel it has changed:

- The search for and creation of alternate families by characters whose biological families have rejected them (Lost Souls, Drawing Blood, The Value of X)

- The way the gay community sometimes victimizes itself almost as effectively as it is victimized by the religious right and its other obvious enemies (Exquisite Corpse, The Lazarus Heart, [to a lesser degree] Prime)

- How doing the work you truly want to do can power your life and fulfill your dreams (Liquor, D*U*C*K)

- How the everyday people of New Orleans, even more than the celebrities, the architecture, the food, the music, the spooky glamour, or any of the other things we're best known for, make it the unique place it is (Liquor, Prime, Soul Kitchen)

I don't know if this is of great interest to anybody, but I don't have much to say about my work these days (what work, ha-ha?), so I thought I'd share.

greygirlbeast writes of her interconnected novels Threshold, Low Red Moon, and Daughter of Hounds:

Usually, when someone asks, which book should I begin with, I say Low Red Moon, which, if you believe this is actually a "series" (it isn't, no more than your life is a series), means you're starting in the middle.

Bold emphasis mine, because it perfectly expresses my feeling about that aspect of the Liquor novels ... which made Three Rivers Press' insistence on trying to shoehorn them into the "mystery series" category and then blaming me when they didn't take off as such all the more galling. However, I do feel that the novels build upon one another to some degree and usually recommend that readers who have a choice begin with Liquor (rather than The Value of X, which takes place first chronologically but seems to be much more favorably received by people who've already read one or more of the "official" Liquor novels than by those who come to it with no knowledge of the characters ... which probably indicates some fairly serious flaws in TVoX, but that can't be helped now. TVoX is what it is, and while it's far from the best novel I have written, I think there is much that is good in it and it was such a joy to write that I will always have a great deal of affection for it).

Just got in from the Avenue, where I saw the second half of Thoth and the first half of Mid-City. I felt absurdly irresponsible when I heard Okeanos rolling at 11:00 this morning and wasn't out there to see them -- since we're living so close to the parade route this year, I feel as if it's my duty to see every single parade -- but my friend Bobby from Athens is in town, and he's coming Uptown this evening to watch Bacchus and Endymion with me and then eat at Chris' restaurant, and I've just got to conserve a little energy. Had I remembered sooner that Thoth was an ibis, though, I'd have been out there for the whole parade.

I was partly good last night. I stayed in and wrote, but what I wrote turned out to be by far the most explicit sex scene I've ever written about Rickey and G-man. I feel ambiguous about this for a couple of reasons. First, readers have been encouraging me -- sometimes not very politely -- to resume writing "erotica," and I don't like seeming as if I'm doing anything to order, so to speak. Second, Rickey and G-man have traditionally been very reticent about having their sex life splashed all over the page for my own titillation or that of readers -- there's a fairly raw scene in "Bayou de la Mère," some in The Value of X,, and, aside from a couple of soft-focus fadeouts in the Liquor novels, that's about it. However, last night's scene (in Waiting For Bobby Hebert) seemed as if it needed to be there, and I don't have a sense of the guys tapping their fingers and scowling at me, so I suppose it will be all right. My standards of "explicitness," though, have changed over the years. The days of eighteen-page sex scenes are long gone.

There has been a pair of Carolina Chickadees at our feeders off and on all day. Hardly an unusual bird for the area, but I've never had any personal visits from them before.