OPUS IS LIVE - March 5, 2006

Twenty years ago today, at around 2:10 in the morning, I finished a novel.

It took me 21 years to write it.

Now, over on my Wisdom of Gigi Blog, I spent last summer chronicling the advent of my journey into becoming a professional musician AND the beginning of “The Opus,” which was the only thing I called it for a long time because I couldn’t think of a decent title. 

Weird, because I can usually come up with decent titles long before I’ve got a decent plot…but I digress.

There’s also an older blog dedicated to the time when I was in the process of finishing “The Opus.” Grand times, y’all. You can check that out HERE - (My Great American Rock Novel). There are also some anecdotes about The Groovetones' early days.

Mercy. Moving on.

“The Opus” was originally one big book, over 700 pages. Its main audience (most of my friends) was reading it, as I finished it. I’d spend DAYS finishing a chapter, email it to my “willing victims,” and twenty minutes later they’d write back and say…

“What happens next?”

If that’s not inspiration, I don’t know what is. 

Then it broke up about four marriages. Mine not included. Again, grand times, y’all. Someone even named their dog after one of my characters. I was flattered.

Anyway…

The thing was done. Then it took another TWELVE years to publish it, with continuing sequels exploding in my head all the while (that’s another story). I was futzing around on Amazon one day and saw this little bitty link that read “Let us Publish Your Book.” 

Or something like that. It was all downhill from there.

Once the next installment (what is now Book 3) was published in 2020, and “The Opus” was an official series known as "Rockin' Heaven Down" after the Heart song of the same name, I decided to do some adjusting and divided the FIRST volume into two separate books with new covers, right in the middle of starting ANOTHER series, mind you. 

No one wants to read a book with 700 pages anymore (they don’t read anything with 300-400 pages, either, apparently, haha), so let’s split some things up. This, in turn, creates another book in the repertoire, thus creating more sales. 

Or at least it was supposed to. (Yeah! How’s that workin’ out for ya???)

They ended up looking pretty cool though. (And yeah, I used Canva. So what?? Having to do book covers yourself, especially for paperback copies, is like being sucked into the tenth level of hell. I’m neither an artist nor a graphic designer, so you better believe I’m taking advantage of free AI training for that stuff. People can kiss my ass.)

Sorry…another tangent.

I guess what I’m trying to say is this: A labor of sex, drugs, and rock’n’roll came to its fruition on Sunday, March 5, 2006, right in the very same room it was seeded.

And there is more to come. That story didn’t end just because the Eighties did. Book 4 is in production as we speak. Along with Book 3 about the werewolf guy. 

My brain is on FIRE, y’all….

I have prolific amount of work to my credit. It's just mostly in my head.

Check it all out:

MY AMAZON AUTHOR PAGE

(Oh, and I will provide Part 10 of the 1985 blog over on Wisdom of Gigi. I got sidetracked.)

Pre-Occupied with 1985 - The Writing Tub

 Taking the first look into The Writing Tub!

Rougarou Blues is HERE!! Part 2: The Playlist

Even though music doesn't feature as prominently in this series, as it does (and should) in the rock series, it's still a major part of New Orleans culture and must add to the setting, because you hear it all over town. IF you've ever visited the Vieux Carré, you know what I'm talking about.

So I created the proverbial master playlist to accompany the action (plus to stir the creative pot inside my head). The song selection, though it includes the usual NOLA fare (Louis Armstrong, Buckwheat Zydeco, Jo-El Sonnier, Mark Broussard, Allen Toussaint), plus the proverbial horror/Halloween-inspired chansons (Alice Cooper, Rob Zombie, Iron Maiden), C-Watch's soundtrack is more of an homage to the vastly diverse collection of artists that The Colonel worked with for almost forty years as a concert production manager. The master list I created is so schizophrenic it's become one of my favorites. 

Charmaine Neville followed by Travis Tritt followed by Public Enemy followed by Type O Negative. 

It's awesome.

What's sad is that I was down to finishing the last chapters before I even considered looking for songs about Rougarous. Duh. Then I realized I had no idea how many songs there really were with "Rougarou" in the title. I even found a band named Rougarou. I used three of them songs I'd discovered for the Book One list:

ENJOY!

Next up, Part 3: Writing Mysteries is HARD!

Rougarou Blues is HERE!!! Part 1: The Story

 Finally!

It only took me five years but it is HERE!!

The first book, Rougarou Blues & Other Dogs, Too, in J. Cyprus DeLaure's supernatural crime series known as C-Watch is now available on Amazon.

A little back story first...

About two books into the Rockin' Heaven Down series, someone told me: "Why don't you write something people will actually read?" 

He was joking, of course, but I understand the niche market there is for books on rock music of the ancient past, which is somewhat non-existent, regardless of Gen X-ers praising the old days of hair metal on TikTok. I get it, though. I needed a more genre-specific thing, like a mystery, or some kind of sci-fi/fantasy/etc. story. I had yet to find the inspiration. Until...

Near the end of 2020, everyone's favorite year (haha), The Colonel had started watching the AMC show "Hell On Wheels" streaming on Netflix. He said it was a good show so he started it over so I could join in and catch up. And he was right: It's a great show. I was especially impressed with Cullen Bohannon, played by Anson Mount, who is now known as Captain Christopher Pike on the Star Trek series "Strange New Worlds." (Another good show, by the way. Old School Trek. I like it.) 

One aspect of "Hell on Wheels" was the "bro-mance" of sorts between main character Bohannon and Elam, played by Lonnie Rashid Lynn, aka the rapper Common. Then suddenly, out of nowhere, I had this idea.

Now before I elaborate, I have to mention that, on the TV series front, we are fans of "NCIS" (the orginal) and "Supernatural." As a big reader myself, I am all into Janet Evanovich's Stephanie Plum series; Lillian Jackson Braun's "The Cat Who" series (thanks to my dear friend Christine Cooper); Sue Grafton's Alphabet Series, and Kathy Reich's Temperance Brennan series, upon which the show "Bones" is based. We're big fans of that one, too. Also, we used to keep up with "Criminal Minds." Naturally, I felt I needed to draw on all those influences. Those are BIG POPULAR THINGS, Y'all!!

So...

Let's say we have this former Marine officer (of course), and he looks a lot like Cullen Bohannan but without the super-crusty demeanor, and he goes to New Orleans (of course) to take this job that he doesn't really know anything about except that it's a night-shift police beat. He has no idea that it's a special investigative unit that solves supernatural crimes. His new partner is this suave, super-cool dude like Derek Morgan, so he looks amazingly like Shemar Moore.

However, these guys aren't "hunters" like Sam and Dean Winchester. They solve crimes committed by and against supernatural beings. It's not secret either; it's all out in the open and perfectly normal, just like all the other spooky stuff that goes on in NOLA. And most of that activity goes on at night: The graveyard shift.

Literally...the graveyard shift.

So, what are some other names for Graveyard Shift? (I didn't want to rip off Stephen King that badly.) Googled some alternatives and discovered "Dog Watch." Huh. That's kinda cool. Who were some mythological dogs? Oh! Cerberus. Zeus's three-headed pet. (And Hagrid's dog Fluffy, of course.)

We'll call it Cerberus Watch. C-Watch. Sounds kinda catchy.

TA-DA!!!

I didn't want to start with vampires. Too predictable. Too cliché. Let's go with a creature more especially related to the swamps of Louisiana.

The Rougarou. Let the research begin.

I had ideas. I started writing. I was doing pretty good, too. Then we had a major life-shift in 2021. My creativity ground to a halt for almost a year. When I picked up momentum there was another hiccup. Then right as I was close to finishing, another hiccup.

But things settled again, and it was finally complete and ready to entertain. A Halloween release would have been ideal but a Christmas one is okay. The story takes place in June, anyway so timing didn't matter.

I took advantage of AI one morning and created the main character. I don't remember what I typed in but I was not disappointed.

Who wouldn't want to read about that guy?? 

I didn't have much luck creating the partner, so we'll just settle for a photo of Shemar.

There's a Pinterest board with other representations, so feel free to peruse the cast of characters and various locations:

You might recognize some of the characters, imagined as well as "real." I'm especially fond of C-Watch's digital forensics analyst. I see great potential there (*wink, wink*). His mother would be proud, I think.

The first book of this series is dedicated to Cassie, an avid "Supernatural" watcher, who on the last Friday of her life came into my writing room and took a peek at my storyboard peppered with index cards full of notes. After a brief explanation, she said, "I'd read that!" And I bet she is!

Stay tuned for Part 2 - The Playlist!

FREE Kindle Promotion!!

June 8, 2024

FREE Kindle Promotion begins!!

FREE Promotion Teaser!

June 7, 2024

FREE Kindle Promotion June 7, 2024

Mysteries Are Hard

 Writing mysteries is hard.

I've read mysteries since I learned to read. One of my first favorite books is "It's A Mystery, Charlie Brown!" (I even conned a bunch of my friends to do a play of it in the fourth grade.) I watched Nancy Drew/Hardy Boys every Sunday Night. I READ every Nancy Drew book throughout 4th and 5th grades. I read Trixie Belden. Cherry Ames, the nurse who did SOME sleuthing. I never missed Charlie's Angels. Until Kate Jackson left. I still have a copy of a Dynamite magazine that gave tips on how to be a PI. I got pretty good at snooping through my Mom's purse.

I got hooked on Evanovich in grad school. Then read the ENTIRE Alphabet Series A - Y. EVERY SINGLE EPISODE of Bones (which are nothing like the books by the way. I'm up to #7.) I'm burrowing through "The Cat Who" series (in your honor, Christine Cooper.) I just finished another Inspector Gamache audiobook. (Louise Penny rocks, y'all. Too bad the Three Pines series did not pan out. Maybe if they'd stayed a little truer to the characters?)

Jonathan Kellerman. Robert Crais. An occasional Bosch book/episode. Elizabeth Peters and Amelia Peabody. I've even gone old school and read an Agatha Christie or two. Death on the Nile is my favorite. I've seen Murder on the Orient Express three times. The first one. With Albert Finney, Lauren Bacall, AND Ingrid Bergman.

CSI. Las Vegas, Miami, AND New York. NCIS. NCIS New Orleans.(Didn't watch LA much). Rockford. Columbo. Quincy. Remington Steele. I went to see The Maltese Falcon in the theater. 

You'd think I'd have this down. You'd THINK.

Then I got this idea at the end of 2019, From a WESTERN, of all things, and hours and hours of Supernatural binge-watching. Here it is almost four years later, and I'm writing, and...

My plot isn't even that intricate or complicated. There's a bad guy (basically) and the good guys catch him (eventually). (Sorry for the spoiler but they DO have a formula). And well...dang. Can't be THAT hard, right?

RIGHT???

They always say write what you know. Stephen King always writes about...writers. Kathy Reichs really is a forensic archaeologist. Patricia Cornwell worked for a real M.E. As a kid, I wrote about...kid stuff. Then I wrote about musicians. Wow. That was hard. Sex, drugs, and rock and roll. Which is only about 5% reality. The other 95%? Spinal Tap. I've been lost under a stage. Not that much of a challenge: Being lost under the stage or writing about it.

And for all of my "if it weren't for you snooping kids" bravado from my "snooping kid" years, sitting down and writing a real "crime" story HAS been a challenge. I'm definitely not a cop or a private investigator, or an investigative journalist, who, as I've noticed from all of this TV watching, is always the one tracking down the real killer or trying to solve the real crime. (Kolchak, anyone? Talk about having cheese with your whine.) I was doing okay, doing mystery stuff...a little character development here, scene setting there...until it was time to do the real "mystery" stuff. 

Wait, the guy didn't figure that out? He didn't ask that question first? This person was where when they saw what? Well...that's not very smart policing. That detail won't work there. If they found his body here, why did they say he collapsed there?

Where did I write that part? What page was THAT on?? Who said THAT?

I usually make stuff up on the fly (they call us "pantsers") but I (mostly) have a loose outline I follow. Stories just go where they go at times and that type of spontaneity is fun. But when you're writing a mystery, you have to have a pretty good idea of how to solve it or you'll have plot holes all over the place. So I had to sit down and really start mapping things out. Then I discovered that my plot is a little bit more complicated than I originally thought.

Isn't that special??

'Scuse me while I zip through another Martha Grimes and see if I can't figure this out.