I bet that got your attention.

After learning one of my favorite writers, Lou Berney, was a staff writer on the FX show The Lowdown, I shuffled my watchlist priorities and watched the Ethan Hawke led neo-noir comedy over the course of a week and a half or so.

The verdict? Even better than I expected. Now I’ll admit, I’m a bit biased. After all, aside from horror, these kinds of stories are my wheelhouse. It’s really like this show was written just for me. A ton of actors I like, people like Lou Berney and Walter Mosley(!) writing, and it’s even set in Tulsa, a town I’m somewhat familiar with. At one point a character even says, “It’s like you’re in a bad crime novel.” To which I say, if by bad you mean good and at times hilariously funny, then yes. An exchange in the final episode involving the muscle relaxant in the title of this post had me absolutely howling.

The Lowdown’s second season is right around the corner, premiering in mid-October, so this is the perfect time to catch up before a new mystery unfolds.

On a quick personal note, I wrote a blog post a ways back about writing and word count. Specifically, that word count is not important unless you want it to be. That particular post was in regard to National Novel Writing Month (NaNoWriMo), where writers are challenged to write a 50,000-word novel in the month of November. That post was meant as a way to prepare other writers that they may not meet the goal, but if participating gets them into the routine of writing regularly, they’ve actually won the challenge.

I tell you that to tell you this: today my word count is important to me. Why? Because I wrote 1200 words today! It’s not a record (personal or world), but it’s the most I’ve written in a long time. Some big life changes managed to get in my way for a while, then my own brain and procrastination stalled me out for a while, so I’ve had a bit of a dry spell. I’m not popping the cork on a bottle of champagne or busting out the party favors yet, but I’m cautiously optimistic. Wanna guess the genre? If you guessed neo-noir, you’d be half right. It’s kind of a supernatural neo-noir. Imagine a Michael Clayton-type story, but directed by the Coen brothers and with a protagonist kind of like Milton from Office Space. What all that really means is that it’s a very dark comedy; some may even call it tasteless. But write what you know, isn’t that what they say?

Until next time.