BRAINPAN LEAKAGE

Let me tell you the story of my trip to the kitchen for coffee, also known as The Day AFTER Thanksgiving Massa-Cree…

I needed coffee. One cup simply hadn’t been enough, and wingnuts were everywhere on Facebook. If I were going to survive, a healthy bolus of caffeine was an absolute must.

I knew I would be going into enemy territory. After all, it was the day after Gluttony Day… The Big L… No, not that L, the L-tryptophan L… But that wasn’t my greatest concern. No, not at all. Truth is, what frightened me the most was the pie. Sure, it was wounded, and hanging out in the icebox with its cohort in crime, whipped cream, but everybody knows that when a pie is wounded that is when it is at its most dangerous…

I tiptoed into the kitchen, being as quiet as I possibly could. The icebox door was still shut, so that was a good thing. I refilled my coffee, then started to leave. I was fairly pleased with myself that I had evaded the pie. That was my first mistake. In my moment of overconfidence I was attacked by the soaking roasting pan and pie dishes in the sink. I had no choice but to engage. It was an epic battle, but I won, “cleaning up” nicely. I didn’t want to run the risk of a second attack, so I went on the offensive, even going so far as to hoof the kitchen compost bucket out to the composter for emptying.

I returned to the kitchen, confident that I had won the war. This was my second mistake. Same as the first, but still the second. Just as I finished wiping down the counter, the cornbread dressing and giblet gravy leapt from the icebox and engaged in a coordinated flanking attack. I was fending them off, but then a bowl and spoon joined the fray. Still, I continued to put up a good fight, right up until the microwave attacked me from behind.

And then… It was all over but the digesting.

Anyone who has read any of the books in the Rowan Gant Investigations series knows who Detective Benjamin Storm and Special Agent Constance Mandalay are. Furthermore, anyone who has talked to me, or attended one of my writing or Q&A seminars knows that everything is book material in my way of thinking. That includes using various quirks or physical descriptions from the everyday reality to enhance the fictional reality, which is still fiction even if I call it a fictional reality. Make sense? Yeah, it doesn’t to me either…

But, here’s where I’m going with this – I use what I know to write stuff that I make up, but what I make up is exactly that – stuff I make up. It’s not real, and it doesn’t actually reflect a real reality.

Case in point, Ben Storm and Constance Mandalay. I should also say here – SPOILER ALERT if you haven’t read my books, or are only just starting to do so…

Ben is loosely – and when I say loosely I mean LOOSELY based on one of my very best friends of all time, a Metropolitan Saint Louis police officer. Their similarities being that they are both 6 foot 6 and the last person on Earth you would want to see coming through a door at you if you are doing something wrong. Other than that, I get “cop slang” from my friend, and of course, procedure and the like. However, that is where it ends. Ben is NOT my buddy, and my buddy is NOT Ben.

In the first few novels of the series, Ben was married to Allisson. She, in turn was LOOSELY based on my cop buddy’s wife – also a very dear friend. Hell, she took me shopping and acted as my fashion consultant when I was desperately trying to woo E K. She’s like a sister to me. However, once again, the LOOSELY based is just that. My friend worked in the medical field, so I made Allisson a nurse.

Constance Mandalay is a Bride of Frankenstein sort of character. By that I mean she is literally a hodge-podge of personality and physical traits from countless individuals, some of whom I know, some of whom I don’t know, and some of whom are also fictional characters from TV shows and movies. That isn’t to say that the pieces didn’t fit well together, because they did. She’s a great character… After all, she even has her own spin-off series now…

But moving right along…

Somewhere around the fourth novel, Ben and Allisson started having some relationship issues. My cop buddy and his wife were NOT mirroring this. Said issues were between the two fictional characters and only on the page. By the fifth novel, things had ended for them and Ben was moving on with his life. Since the young, pretty, intelligent, Sig Sauer packing FBI agent, Constance Mandalay, had been at odds with Ben on more than one occasion a natural progression took place – Tension turned into sexual tension, and they ended up dating.

Back here in the real world, my cop buddy’s wife was none too pleased about this, and she has been sure to let me know.

Every. Single. Time. I. Talk. To. Her.

And so, just the other night we were all together at Double D’s Pizzeria, which is owned by their son. We were having a bit of a planning meeting about the release party for In The Bleak Midwinter which will be taking place there at Double D’s. I brought them one of the ARCs of ITBM as a gift, and as she started flipping through it I made the preemptive comment, “Yeah, Ben and Constance are still dating.”

She looked across the table at her husband and said, “So you’re still having an affair with Constipated, huh…”

It’s a good thing Mandalay is fictional, because gun or no, I’m thinking she wouldn’t stand a chance against my buddy’s wife, and the nickname would be the least of her worries…

More to come…

Murv