Here I Come A'Castle-ing

I don't mind admitting it, I thoroughly enjoy the television show Castle. If I could only watch one show each week, that would be the one. Now I get to do a little of what Castle does.

I am doing research to help add more police realism to my next couple of novels about the small town police who first appeared in my debut novel, Crossbow. I have received a lot of fan mail from people who enjoyed the quirky characters in the book, and I have decided to bring them back for more.

I will be joining members of the local detachment of the Royal Canadian Mounted Police in night watches, traffic patrols and more. I want to add a female officer to the mix in the novels, so I will also go on patrol with a female RCMP officer. 

It seems that one thing that all the fans of the book who have written to me so far have in common is a love for Duke, the pee-mail communicating, snack-sniffing Springer Spaniel that one of the deputies is vainly trying to train as a police dog. I'll be watching a K-9 officer and his human counterpart, as well.

Castle is right. As he says, "There are two kinds of people who spend their time thinking about ways to kill people: psychopaths and mystery writers." In Crossbow, I found ways to kill off 12 characters, and it definitely is the better paying of the two. I may not kill as many in the book I am working on now, but I can assure your their deaths will be unique.

Have I got a great job or what?

A recent reader review of Crossbow:

Having read all I could get in my Kindle of his other books, I approached Crossbow with a pleasant sense of anticipation. Thinking it would be a book of hilarious mishaps with the eventual solving of a murder, I was quickly brought up short by the seriousness of it. I love humorous fiction, and this was not it. It was better. Much better. It was not as light a read as, say, Charlotte MacLeod or the like. But I absolutely loved the quirks and twists and convoluted nature of the whole thing as it unraveled. And the humor WAS there ... right where it should be in a story like that: in the background a bit, subtle, always hovering around the edges to soften the hideousness of the crime(s). Also, unlike many mystery writers, he neither gives you the knowledge of "who dun it" right up front, nor does he make you wrack your brain and then have the mystery solved by someone who had knowledge all along that the reader had no way of knowing. The hints are there. 

But Duke, by far, steals the show.

Why Does Someone Like Me Write Humor?

Someone asked me why I write humor, or for that matter, how can I write humor? I know what they were really saying, “How and why can someone who has a spinal cord injury possibly find anything to laugh about, let alone share it with others.”

I was raised in a family that laughed a lot. We were taught that there was a funny side to just about anything, and it was a lot better to laugh than cry. Occasionally, my mother would think my brother, sister and I might be getting a little too far into the hilarity and she would say, “Be careful. Someone could end up crying.”

It was usually Dad.

I didn’t see anything funny about being disabled; certainly not for the first few years. It hit me right out of the blue. I guess I would be better off saying it enveloped me, and it seemed pretty blue. I was sitting in my wheelchair one day, either in a line-up at the bank or the grocery store, I don’t remember which, but that’s not important.

The idea to start writing humor was propelled in my direction. The unknown person in front of me gave me the idea. I remember thinking, someone should write about living life at fart height. (Think about it for a minute. You’ll get the picture.)

My wife had been encouraging me to write the kind of material I wanted to write, now that my career of writing what other people wanted me to write for them was behind me. Maybe I was the person to write about living at fart height.

In the ensuing eighteen years I have written nine books, hundreds of newspaper features, and magazine articles. My readers may ascertain that I am disabled from some of the things I have written, but I still haven’t written about living at fart height.

Until today.

I write about being a husband, father, dog owner and observer of life. All of those subjects have little or nothing to do with being disabled. Being disabled is just a small part of my life. For a lot of people it defines me, but I don’t define myself that way. Reader’s Digest said my specialty is making readers laugh at me, at themselves, and at life in general.

It’s that life in general where the humor is most easily found.

I’m not your everyday writer. A TV talk show host once said she never know what I might say next. (Truth be known, neither do I.) One look at my titles will tell you I am just a little bit different. It’s been that way from the very first book, Justice Is Blind – And Her Dog Just Peed In My Cornflakes.

My ninth book was just released last week. My Slice Of Life Is Full Of Gristle is my seventh collection of short humorous essays. My other two are novels, including the top selling Christmas humor book on Amazon Kindle leading up to Christmas 2011.

And someday I promise. I’ll write about living at fart height.

My books are available at

http://www.gordonkirkland.com/bookstore

Contact me through:

Website – http://www.gordonkirkland.com

Facebook -- https://www.facebook.com/pages/Gordon-Kirkland/56688189161

Twitter -- @kirklandatlarge

I’d love to hear from you.

My Monitor Survived,

OK. I’ve calmed down a bit, now.

Last week I was anything but calm. There were a few moments there when I was tempted to punch my monitor. A friend sent me another columnist's Thanksgiving column, and asked if it contained my material.

It did.

Part of the reason for my anger is that this material is something I was particularly proud of, because it always got a great reaction form my readers and audiences. I had used it in three separate newspaper columns, a magazine article and a stand-up comedy routine. I even used it as an example of how to use exaggeration for comedic effect in a writers’ workshop that this person attended.

A writer spends a lot of time and effort on their words. They are our products, and we strive to give our very best to our readers. When someone else takes them as their own, it leaves you feeling violated, as though someone came into your home and stole a prized possession.

I suppose I could be somewhat forgiving if this was someone who was just starting out in the business and didn’t know any better. The person in question is anything but. She is even on the board of a National writers’ organization, albeit, one that several of us left a number of years ago because of some ethics problems with a couple of the board members who were there back then. I think I will keep ignoring their membership drive emails, and recommend to others that they do the same.

When I told the person that I was disappointed by her use of my material without credit, she sent a message that basically said, she hadn’t done it intentionally. Sorry, but that is just unadulterated bull byproduct. She did, in fact, intentionally use my material as her own. She said, "I thought it was so funny, that I worked it into this story." 

She clearly just doen't get it. I'm not sure on what planet it's OK to "work" another writer's material into your story. It doesn't take work to steal from another.

Intentional or not, she cannot say that she didn’t know that it was mine. She sent me a note a few weeks before mentioning this specific example of my material. That sounds to me like she intentionally used the material because she "thought it was so funny."

I’ve chosen not to identify the person publicly. I have received eighteen emails from people who were quite able to identify her themselves, all expressing surprise that she would lift my material for her personal gain. It would also seem that she has more than just me angry about it. A lawyer suggested that I sue her. Another writer suggested that I should send the evidence to every outlet that has published her to let them know what kind of person they are dealing with.

A dear friend, who is a Christian minister and a counselor, said, “What would you do if she broke into your house and took your computer? Call the cops, or write her a nice email? As a "woman of the cloth" I can tell you that to "love your neighbour" is never to shield them from the natural consequences of their behaviour.”  

My friend Raul Ramos-Sanchez, a fantastic writer said it best, “I'm astonished that some "writers" are so enamored of the limelight they are willing to bask in it even when the material that puts them there is not their own.”

I must say that, if anything good has come from this, is it the gratifying feeling I have gotten from all of the messages of support.

A mutual friend says she feels badly about this and thinks I hate her now. Hate is a pretty strong word. I have certainly lost respect for her and my inbox tells me that I am not alone in that. I am also sorry that I agreed to write a foreword for her book. I even feel a bit of pity for her, because she felt the need to take something of mine rather than go to the trouble of coming up with something of her own.

I’m not going to write to every outlet that has carried her article. I think that if she has any integrity left, she should do that herself. By a couple of the emails I got, they are bound to find out anyway. I’m not going to sue her. I think the court of public opinion among other writers is passing a much stronger sentence.

So, my monitor is still in one piece. That's a good thing. I think I need it to see how to remove any reference to this person from my computer.