BRAINPAN LEAKAGE

In case you are unfamiliar with what I mean by that title, to Castle, or Castling, is a defensive strategy in chess, whereby the king moves two squares toward the rook that is to be castled with, (this can be the rook on either side, so long as it fits the rules below). The rook then moves past the king to the square on the opposite side and takes up a position there.

Yeah, that chess piece on each end isn’t called a castle, it’s called a rook. The move itself is called Castling… And, there are a handful of rules, as mentioned above, that go along with the move… Like not having any other pieces in between the rook and king and, neither the rook nor king having been moved from their original positions prior to Castling, yadda yadda…

But, since I don’t have anyone with whom to play chess, I don’t get to do it that much these days. Therefore, I’m not actually here to talk to you about defensive strategies in a board game that stems from 1400’s Europe, and even farther back than that if you want to get technical about it. If I was here to do that, I would probably ramble on about a much more arcane and little used move like, En Passant. But, let’s just not even get started with that…

And, I’m not even going to talk about heavily fortified medieval structures either… As amazing as it may seem, I am going to prattle on endlessly about television… Seriously. Yeah, I know… Kinda weird, eh? Especially coming from me…

So, on with this whole TV thing…

You see, last night, E K was surfing around the web, checking out clips from the Oscars, mainly because we don’t actually watch that stuff, but she had heard a couple of things on the grapevine and wanted to see the clips.  Probably so she could look at Hugh Jackman or something, who knows… Either way, in her searches and such, she ran across an advertisement for a new TV show…

Yeah, you guessed it, the name of the show is, Castle. Here is a little snippet about it from the ABC website:

“Wildly famous mystery novelist Richard Castle (Nathan Fillion) is bored with his own success. Then he learns that a real-world copycat killer has started staging murder scenes depicted in his novels. Castle is questioned by NYPD Detective Kate Beckett (Stana Katic), a bright and aggressive detective who keeps her investigations under tight rein. Though they instantly clash, sparks of another sort also begin to fly, leading both to danger and a hint of romance as Castle steps in to help find the killer. And once that case is solved, he and Beckett build on their new relationship as they look to solve more strange homicides in New York – as much fun as one can have with death and murder.”

Now, obviously, the minute the Evil Redhead mentioned this to me, I turned my desk chair around, because, well, the way our shared office is set up we have our backs to one another. So, in order to see what she was talking about I pretty much had to turn around… But, of course, that’s not the only reason. First, there is the fact that she said Nathan Fillion was starring in the show. While I’m not a rabid celebrity chaser or anything, I happen to like Mister Fillion’s acting. And, after all, he’s one of our BDH’s. In case you don’t know what a BDH is, the beloved acronym stands for, Big Damn Heroes… Serenity… Firefly… Captain Tightpants… Malcolm Reynolds… Trust me, this is an important thing to know.

Of course, the second thing to capture my attention was something just as important as the fact that Mister Fillion was starring in the series, if not infinitely more so. Obviously, that would be the fact that he is playing the part of a mystery author. I mean, after all, that’s pretty much exactly what I do for a living, so it’s definitely going to spark my interest just a bit, don’tcha think?

But, since the wayback machine is always sitting in the corner of my office, just chugging away as it waits for a passenger or two, we might want to pay a bit of attention to it. We don’t have to take a trip or anything, but just for the sake of full disclosure, maybe we should poke our heads in through the hatch and have a look at the “Visio Temporal Doozy-what-zits Screen“…

Back in 1979 and 1980, there was a short lived TV series starring Dennis Weaver. The title was, “Stone“. (Funny, castles are made of stone, aren’t they? But, I digress…) Anyway, Mister Weaver played the part of Daniel Ellis Stone, a police detective who also happened to be a bestselling crime novelist. Hm… There’s your police procedural element, eh?

But, it doesn’t stop there…

Back in 2002 we had another short lived series about a writer, “Stark Raving Mad.” This one starred Tony Shalhoub, (of Wings and Monk fame), as Ian Stark, a King-esque horror author who was all about practical jokes and having a good time. Hm… There’s your comedic element, eh?

Of course, if we wanted to step all the way into the wayback machine, we could find many more examples of authors as main characters in movies and TV… Murder She Wrote, anyone? However, for a quick look on the “how do these things relate scale,” those are a couple of the more recent…

So, what I am saying here is that the premise behind Castle isn’t exactly new. But, let’s not take that as me being critical, because I’m definitely not. Any writer worth a damn will tell you that there is no such thing as a book or story that hasn’t been written, because it simply isn’t true. There are only so many plots and premises, and trust me, they’ve all been used. What we do, as writers, is put a different spin on those staples we have rattling around in our tool bags.  This show appears to do just that…

So, back to that turning around thing…

E K clicked on over to the ABC website, specifically to the page devoted to Castle, and there happened to be a couple of video excerpts embedded there for promotional purposes. Well, being the curious sorts we both are, she started them up and we sat back to watch.

Of course, as we all know, the excerpts are generally the best parts of the show, strung together in such a way as to get you to tune in to the whole thing, thereby watching the commercials, buying the advertised products, which in turn, causes the advertiser to buy more air time, thereby financing the network and show, and… Well, you get the picture. The other thing about excerpts is this… Very often they will imply things that not only don’t happen in the show proper, but they will even flat out lie about what is going to happen, and even use footage that came from the cutting room floor. Therefore, we have to take these excerpts for what they truly are, that being, promotional gimmicks, see above for more details.

That said, I have to admit I got a kick out of these particular clips.

Mister Fillion has great comic timing, and is a very versatile actor, to say the least. Still, there were a couple of things that bugged me… Just a little… And, while I am gearing up to mention them here, I am also truly reserving judgment until I see the full episodes, because, as I said, excerpts are just excerpts after all…

The things that caused me to raise an eyebrow:

1. Wildly successful authors: In the excerpt, Castle is playing poker with a stack of wildly successful author buddies – Patterson, King, etc… They are all flush with cash, and at one point there is a mention of a series/character keeping a particular author’s “private jet” fueled long after people have forgotten about Castle’s recently killed off character.
2. Me: What I mean by that is, I see a little too much of “me” in the character of Castle. (No, I don’t believe for a minute, nor am I claiming that someone is following me around and using me as a template for the character… see my explanation below…)

Point number one is the real kicker. I am hoping that after I see the actual episodes that some of these “private jet” oriented comments are intended as tongue-in-cheek. If they are, well then I can have a good laugh. Because, while there are a few wildly successful authors out there, few is the operative word. Better than 95% of the literature folks pick up to read and enjoy is written by mid-list and lower mid-list authors… Those of us who are basically pulling in a living somewhere between “poverty level” and “kinda okay average”.  I’m not complaining… It’s a career choice I made… But, I already have folks believing that I live on my own private island with servants and such. I can just see people watching this series and suddenly assuming that all authors are millionaires, just like they make ridiculous assumptions about cops, firemen, lawyers, and any other profession that has been “over-dramatized” on TV. (Remind me to tell you the story  sometime of the parent at my child’s school who made that exact assumption about me when he found out I am a published author of a series. I still haven’t been able to convince him otherwise.)

Point number two… Well, it’s not really a problem so much as an  amusing observation… While I am certainly nowhere near as good looking as Mister Fillion, nor am I anywhere near as successful as his character, Castle,  nor am I a skirt chaser, (although, I readily admit to being a major flirt), I do have something very much in common with him. That is, a tendency to toss silly witticisms out there, no matter what the situation, dire or otherwise. I suppose, like the character, humor is my relief valve / defense mechanism. So, I can easily see myself watching this show and mumbling, “Yeah, that’s exactly what I would have said,” or even literally knowing what he is going to say before he says it. I already found myself doing that with the clips…

In any event, I have high hopes for this one. It’s great to see Mister Fillion doing well, and I cannot say as that I am displeased by the idea of an author getting to be the main character of a TV show, because, well, I’d be lying. Truth is, I’m pretty excited about it.

According to ABC’s website, Castle premieres Monday, March 9th, at 10/9 Central. I don’t know about the rest of you, but I’ll definitely be tuning in. In fact, I already wrote it down on my calendar…

More to come…

Murv

… PS. Something I forgot to mention. The novel character Castle just killed off? His name was Storm. Ring any bells?

LOLcats seem to have all the answers. They can tell you if you are doing whatever it is you are doing, correctly, or as they like to say, “rite”.

Of course, they will also gladly inform you if you are doing it incorrectly, or also as they like to say, wrong… Amazingly enough, for being such atrocious spellers on the whole, they actually get that last one correct. Well, you know what they say about blind pigs and truffles… Maybe that applies to cats and “cheezburgers” too.

Anyway, since those little bastages apparently have the scoop on everything, I suppose that is why I am paying homage to them in the picture above. I mean, after all, imitation is the sincerest form of flattery… Hold on a second while I go barf up a hairball in my wife’s new shoes. That should flatter the hell out of the little “cheezburger nom nom nommers“… I just have to decide which pair I should toss the yak into…

Stunning visual there, eh?

Of course, as usual, I’m not here to talk to you about LOLcats, “cheezburgers” and who can “haz” them, or even my wife’s shoes, although I have to admit, E K has some really great shoes… And what with me being a leg guy and all… I’m just sayin‘…

Okay, fine… Y’all are really putting a crimp in my fun, you know… So anyway, what I am really here to prattle on about is blogging.

You see, ever since moving my blog from Myspace and setting it up over here on this self-hosted WordPress platform, I have been tracking little things like page views, subscriptions, and the like. Why? Because I can, I guess… But mainly, I just do it for fun… Really. I’m certainly not out to set any Google page rank records or anything… (Yeah, that whole page rank thing is going to show up in another blog… Trust me… I already wrote it and queued it up, so be on the lookout.) However, moving on with the current ramble, throughout this process I have been doing some studying… Or, as we like to call it back home in Kentucky, studyin’. And, because of all that studyin’ I’ve been uh-doin’, I have now added some new material to my reading list…

Unfortunately, it’s not the “reading for pleasure” kind of material…

Being an author, besides my research and such, I tend to read articles about marketing. Yeah, that’s why I sometimes refer to myself as a marketing whore… It’s all just part of being an author type person… Especially a fiction author… The publisher does quite a bit, but there’s still a whole stack of marketing that falls in the lap of the person who slung the words in the first place. In fact, the old adage is that an author’s job “begins the moment he or she types The End.” (Actually, we don’t type, The End... We type -30- or # # #, but that’s another story).

Be that as it may, I won’t go there, because we’ve already traveled this particular dark and rut-filled road in the past. I will, however, point out that the new material I added to my reading list had to do with, yes, marketing… Specifically, effectively using your blog for marketing.

And, as you can see in the picture up top, based on what I learned from everything I’ve read, I’m “doin it wrong.”

Apparently, I am supposed to be blogging solely about things such as writing, current events as they pertain to my writing, and more importantly, I am supposed to be handing out all kinds of helpful advice and crap about… Yeah, you guessed it, writing. But, I am supposed to do all of this without writing about myself, in any way, shape, or form, or reveal the fact that I am a writer by trade, other than to casually mention that I am in fact the author of said blog. But not of books… Just the blog… And only casually… That’s it. Nothing more.

However, if I really, really want to be impressive to the masses, what would make me an even more effective and popular blogger would be if I was some kind of Perez Hilton/TMZ clone, and I blogged about stupid things that celebrities do. Unfortunately, I generally don’t give a flying rat’s ass about “celebrities”… Megan Gallagher, well, she’d be the exception, but we won’t go there…

So… According to the “experts” it’s either that, or posting naked pictures in my blogs. That’d work too…

Well… I don’t wanna do any of that… Maybe the nekkid pictures… Yeah, okay, different blog… At any rate, one of my old bosses used to say, “An expert is a spurt that couldn’t cut it and had to quit.” There are all kinds of places we could go with that, but again, we won’t go there… Suffice it to say, being an expert really doesn’t mean all that much in the grand scheme of things.

But, seriously… There are all manner of do’s and don’ts to this blogging stuff. I’m actually starting to wish someone had supplied me with a manual up front, then I would have known I was breaking the rules right from the outset.

On that note, I have to say, I’m fairly amused by some of the lists I’ve read. You know, the “50 Tips For Better Blogging” type of lists. My favorites go something like this:

1. Don’t post blogs on weekends.
2. Don’t write about yourself.
3. Put links in your blog.
4. Post on weekdays.
5. Post on weekends because no one else posts on weekends.
6. Put pictures in your blog.
7. Write about yourself.
8. Write about your dog.
9. Don’t post on weekdays, no one will have time to read the post.
10. Don’t put links in your blog.
11. Don’t clutter up your blog with pictures. Text only.
12. Write an interconnected series.
13. Never write a series. Only short, 2 or 3 paragraph standalone blogs.
14. …

… And on from there. Telling you to do this, don’t do that, and contradicting themselves at every turn… Almost always within the same list. I honestly believe that some of these “helpful hints” have to have been posted as tongue in cheek silliness just to see if anyone would follow the “rules”. Either that, or the creator of the list has a debilitating hippocampus injury and cannot remember what she/he wrote two seconds ago.

But, no matter what, they all agree with the LOLcats. I am doing it wrong… I’m not suppose to be entertaining, I am supposed to be disseminating useful information devoid of any entertainment whatsoever. My blogs have to have a higher purpose… Higher purpose, not special purpose… Just how many times have you seen The Jerk, anyway? Yeah… Figures.

Well, as I’ve said in the past about my novels, sometimes the purpose is just to entertain, and in my estimation, that’s one damn fine purpose, and it ranks right up there with all the rest.

You know… I think I’ll just stop reading those articles and have myself a “cheezburger” instead…

More to come…

Murv