BRAINPAN LEAKAGE

E K is evil. We all know that. Those of you who don’t have any first hand experience in that area will simply have to take my word for it. Trust me, it’s better that way. Save yourselves, escape while you can. Don’t even look back, there’s no hope for me at this point. Really. Just leave me and get out of here before she catches you.

Okay… Now that you are safe I can continue… Seeing as E K is pure, unadulterated evil, as well as a ruthless secret agent who makes Jack Bauer look like a pantywaist, (see: Kay… E Kay…), The Evil One is generally armed for bear whenever she leaves the house.

You know, all the standard lethal force, 007/CTU killing and torturing kind of stuff – stiletto heels with real stilettos, poison lipstick, exploding PDA, miniature rocket launching mascara, electrocuting cell phone, .40 caliber hairbrush, etc… Yeah, the whole nine yards.

Now, since her top secret cover is that of a soccer mom, she drives a heavily armored mini-van that has its own rocket launchers behind the headlights, ejection seats, special cubbyholes for hiding bodies, machine guns in the fender wells, and it can even drive underwater.

Still, my dear and lovely is a hands on kind of killer woman. Something about liking to be up close and personal with her victims before stomping the life out of them. Like I said, she’s evil…and cruel…extremely cruel. I mean, we don’t call her E K for nothing.

At any rate, since she likes the hands on approach, in her soccer mom mobile, she carries a miniature Louisville Slugger. Yeah, exactly… A small, wooden, novelty baseball bat. From what I gather, she uses it to render her victims unconscious before she tapes them to a chair and tortures them. (Yeah, she carries several rolls of duct tape too. Go figure.)

So… The other day we had occasion to do a bit of shopping – grocery shopping, in fact. After all, an active assassin woman like E K has to eat balanced, healthy meals and such, so that she can stay in top form. Well, after we climbed out of the armored urban assault vehicle disguised as a soccer mom mobile, and I was rolling the sliding door shut – I severely wrenched my shoulder from muscling all that armor sideways, btw – I happened to notice her pint sized noggin knocker laying on the floor next to the offspring’s rear seat. Now, I happened to know that this wasn’t the secret hiding place for this particular piece of weaponry, so I pointed at it and asked the munchkin, “What are you doing with that?”

To which she replied, “I think it’s cute.”

Hey, she’s nine. Right now, in her world, just about everything is “cute”, except for the boys at her school and asparagus.

“Well, that’s fine, but it belongs to Mommy,” I told her.

For whatever reason, that idea didn’t sit well with her. As we started across the parking lot, the short person turned to E K and said, “You don’t need a bat, Mommy.”

Since we are trying to keep E Kay’s secret agent status a secret from the offspring right now, but also trying not to make a habit of lying to her, I piped up and said, “Sure she does. She has it for emergencies.”

“Yes I do,” E K agreed, then decided to expand upon the comment with an explanation. Unfortunately, she must have been receiving an urgent encoded message on her microwave transmitter dental work at that same instant that effectively diverted her attention, because what ended up tumbling from her lips was, “I have it in case I need to beat someone off.”

Yeah… Trust me, we were both thinking exactly what you are thinking right now…

And, because I was thinking the same thing you are thinking, I couldn’t help but snicker. Really… I simply couldn’t help myself. And, I was safe from retribution for it because neither could E K. Had we been drinking at the time there would have been a mess to clean up, know what I mean?

Of course, our stifled laughs were definitely preceded by one of those  split second, heart stopping, “Oh shit, that definitely came out wrong” moments. I’m sure the dropped-jaw, wide-eyed, deer-in-headlights expressions we both wore in that instant were utterly priceless. Too bad we didn’t have a camera handy. Fortunately, the unintended euphemism went right over the offspring’s head – literally and figuratively.

I have no idea what Freud would have made of the comment, especially since E K was wearing blue jeans at the time and no slip was involved.  Still, sometimes a cigar is just a cigar, and a faux pas is just a faux pas. Still, as we entered the store I made the mistake of saying, “That’s definitely blog material.”

E K just sighed and said, “Why is everything blog material?”

“Because it’s funny,” I answered.

I didn’t catch all of her reply, mainly because she seemed to be mumbling to herself. Still, I’m pretty sure I heard something about needing to find a place to hide my body.

More to come…

Murv

One of the questions I get on a regular basis – I guess that would make it a FAQ – is, “If the Rowan Gant Investigations were ever made into movies, who would you pick to play the lead roles?”

Well, the reality is, IF the RGI series ever ended up in HollerWood, I can almost guarantee you that I won’t have the least bit of say about who is cast. In fact, I seriously doubt I’ll have any say whatsoever in anything, because once they negotiate a price and pay me for the rights to base a movie on one of my books, they can pretty much do whatever they hell they want.  That’s how it works.

And, ya’know, if there are enough zeros behind that dollar sign, I won’t have a problem with that. Maybe some of you would consider that “selling out”, but hey, I have a family to support, and even though I’m a fiction author I am also a realist. I would certainly hope that they would stick to the story and ideals, but as I said, for the right price, I would be happy to look the other way. It would be, after all, only a movie.

But, I digress, as usual…

The actual reason behind this blog is that I was recently contacted by the folks over at storycasting.com. Their site is sort of like a “fantasy football/baseball” thing, only instead of being sports based, it is Fantasy Movie Casting for literature – i.e. readers/fans are able to log in and cast an imaginary movie based on books in classic and popular literature, using a database of actors. They will even add actors if you have one in mind that isn’t already in the DB.

So, to make a long story even longer, they contacted me because they had listed the RGI series in their database, which means folks are now able to “virtually cast” a pretend movie. I thought this was kind of cool, so I sent a note out about it on Twitter – feel free to follow me, btw. Just not too closely, as I make frequent stops –   and, of course, folks began asking about the actors I would pick.

Well, just for grins, I made note that if I were to cast the stories as really friggin’ bizarre dark comedies I would probably go this route:

Rowan = Paul Reubens or Jack Black
Felicity = Kathy Griffin
Ben = Brad Garrett
Constance = Kathleen Madigan

I’m not exactly sure how well that went over, to be honest. Of course, it was just a joke… Hopefully everyone took at that way. I know one of my fans did for sure, because she came back with the suggestion of Ron Jeremy.

Methinks she was casting a different type of movie based on the books if you get my drift…

At any rate, the folks over at Storycasting.com have set up an “author” account for me so that I can, as they say, create an “authoritative” cast list. (I thought that was kind of a funny play on words, myself… Of course, as we know I’m fairly easily amused which is why E K doesn’t bother hiring someone to watch me while she’s at work…)

I’ve already started playing around with the “authoritative” cast.  It could change, you never know. I have some research to do and bribes to take. (Grin) But, y’all should feel free to start generating your own cast lists right away. I’ll be interested to see if any of them match up.

More to come…

Murv