THORN: Life of a novel character not so novel after all

Saturday, October 13, 2007

I don't know about you, but there are days when I'd rather be anyone other than my dependable, practical, law-abiding, boring old self. A slinky seductress with a hot skirt and a cold heart, a bank robber, a back-stabber . . .

Heck, I'd even settle for just being the sort of person who throws a pop can out the car window without looking over my shoulder to see whose tongue might be clucking.

So when I got wind that authors had agreed to auction off character names at a 2006 Jefferson County Public Library fundraiser, I have to admit my mind began to reel.

Oh, the possibilities!

If you've been following this trend in the book world, you know how it works: Authors help their pet causes by allowing people to bid for the right to have a character named after them in one of the author's upcoming books.

Stephen King, for example, once auctioned off a part in his zombie- fest Cell for a cool $25,100 on behalf of the First Amendment Project. Better yet, Carl Hiaasen promised to turn someone into a "taxidermied rat" in his next children's novel, to benefit the same charity.

So you can see why I couldn't let the Jeffco event pass without further investigation. Now that the books that patrons bid on were starting to hit the shelves, I couldn't help wondering: Had their investments transformed them into something fabulously wicked?

More important, should I practice one of my most boring qualities - prudence - and start saving for the next auction?

I called Ron Else.

Else runs Denver's Who Else! Books, in the Denver Book Mall, with his wife, Nina. He laid down $125 at the Jeffco fundraiser to buy his way into local author Robert Greer's new mystery novel, The Mongoose Deception.

Let me say upfront that Else wasn't looking for transformation or immortality, the way I would have been. "I didn't want to be pompous and have my name in the book. It's really not my style," he says.

Instead of using his name, he thought Greer might have his protagonist - a man embroiled in a Kennedy-assassination conspiracy - simply come into his store looking for books "and I'd get some publicity for the store," he says.

"I didn't want to pressure the author to twist his character or mess with the plot in his mind, (saying something annoying like) 'Oh please, make me an attractive blond."

Good ol' Else. I'd have been shipping poor Greer e-mails 10 times a day with the exact length and shade of hair required.

Still, I'm glad for Else's sake that Greer had bigger aims: He turned the low-key bookseller into a man of action - surly FBI agent Ron Else. While Else uses the term milquetoasty to describe himself, his alter ego is no shrinking violet. Here's a man, Greer writes with no small amount of gusto, who had "spent a career sifting through JFK-assassination investigative trash and conspiracy swill."

And Greer even threw in a bonus at no extra charge: He decided to give Else's name a hidden meaning. By the end, "this character turns out to be something other than what you perceive throughout the entire novel," says Greer.

He's something else. Get it?

I love the concept. And Else, too, seems pleased with the results.

But what of the other bidders?

I also reached Kay Stafford at her Ken Caryl home.

Stafford, 67, is a retired librarian and grandmother of three. Outbid on her shot to become a character in the next Annie Proulx book, she plunked down $500 for romance/ mystery writer Sandra Brown.

Like me, she was hoping for some thrilling new persona. "I was thinking the whole time that I might be a delicious villainess in her novel."

Something, I'm guessing, like the gorgeous, manipulative trophy wife Elise Laird from Brown's Ricochet. Or the stunning Alex Ladd, implicated in the murder of a detested real estate developer in The Alibi.

So, what did she get?

A few weeks ago, filled with excitement, she cracked open Brown's new book, Play Dirty, and looked for her name.

"Unfortunately," she says, in the somber tone someone reporting a death in the family might use, "my character is a character who is somewhat true to my nature. She's an administrative secretary to the main character.

"And she's, um, uh, well" - Stafford can barely get out the words - "she's reliable, competent, supportive - all those boring adjectives."

You could hear the long, terrible sigh in her voice as the air hissed out of her dreams and all the wicked possibilities whipped miserably to the ground.

Administrative secretary? You might as well cast someone as an insurance adjuster. Her character is a "really nice person," Stafford allows. "But gosh, what fun is that?"

I should have offered her solace. I should have said a secretary faces danger every day, a secretary takes risks and makes split-second decisions (just slot the boss at the wrong restaurant for lunch and see what happens).

But need I remind you, I'm not the lying type. Instead, I wallowed in the bad news as if I'd paid the $500 and not Stafford. And at that moment, I had an epiphany: If you can pay hundreds of dollars and end up filing papers and scheduling luncheon appointments, you might as well stick with your own boring old life.

So it looks like I won't be waiting for the next charity auction after all - unless, that is, Hiaasen offers another one of his stuffed rodent characters for sale. For that, I'd commit murder.

Er, or at least speed through a school zone on a Sunday.

Patti Thorn is the books editor. thornp@RockyMountainNews.com, 303-954-5419