BRAINPAN LEAKAGE

…is just a cigar.

Several years ago there was this great little sitcom called “Stark Raving Mad,” which starred Tony Shaloub (Wings, Monk) and Neil Patrick Harris (Doogie Howser, Dr. Horrible, How I Met Your Mother.)

The short lived series centered on best-selling (fictional) horror author, Ian Stark. I could go on and on about it, because I absolutely loved the show. Unfortunately, it lasted only one season, and oddly enough was canceled somewhere around one month prior to my own first novel, Harm None: A Rowan Gant Investigation, showing up in bookstores.

But, I’m not here to rant about stupid TV execs… Even though I’m known to do that from time to time. Firefly anyone? Drive anyone? But, I digress…

Nope, not here to rant on TV guys.  I’m here to talk about something else (as usual). However, we know how my brain works and it just so happens a particular episode of “Stark Raving Mad” popped into my head as an illustration of my point…

Episode 17 – THE GRADE: Quick synopsis – A regular character who is a friend of Ian’s, and who works at the bar on the ground floor below his apartment is going to night classes at the local college. She is working extra hours and in her lit class she needs to write an analysis of a book – as it happens, the book she has selected is one of Ian’s. Hilarity ensues, of course… However, the reason it ensues is that she is so busy she manages to talk Ian into writing the book report for her. Her professor, played by John Lithgow (another of my faves) gives her a B. Ian simply can’t stand it, since he wrote the report about a book he had written in the first place.  Upon Ian confronting the prof,  it is explained to him how “Maddie” (Ian’s friend) had completely missed the underlying meaning of the knife used in a murder. Ian tells the professor, “Sometimes a knife is just a knife.” What makes it funnier, however, is that even after the prof discovers that he is talking to Ian Stark himself, the author of the book as well as the paper, he continues to disagree (and if I recall correctly, even drops “Maddie” down to a C.)

And that, my friends, is “what I’m talkin’ about”…

Sometimes a knife is just a knife, a cigar just a cigar, and a redhead just a redhead – although I would prefer you not tell E K (or Felicity for that matter) that I made that last comment.

My point is, I write novels. And believe me, I dearly love the fact that there are people out there who become emotionally invested in the stories. I think we’ve already established in a previous blog entry that I do as well.

However (You saw that coming, correct?) based on some of the “fan mail” I receive I feel compelled to point out a few things…

They are stories. Works of fiction. Not instructional manuals for your Wiccan coven.

Just because you live on a street that has the same name as a street in one of my novels, that doesn’t mean I am writing about you. Really. Seriously. We’ve never even met, so how could I possibly be writing about you… Wait. Don’t answer that. I’m relatively certain I don’t want to know the convoluted logic…

Just because you have red hair it doesn’t mean you are Felicity.

You are not… I repeat NOT… the “reincarnation” of Rowan Gant. (Honestly, I don’t even begin to understand that one. He’s fictional, but even if we discount that fact, he’s not even dead.)

I could go on and on, but I think you get the point. Sometimes a cigar is just that… A cigar.

And a novel, no matter how entertaining, is still a novel…

More to come…

Murv

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?