So I'm going to be a fictional character, but I'm not watching the Super Bowl.
While I'm not a huge American Football person, I pay it some attention. I regularly attended the local games when I was in high school and then university, so many years ago now. For decades, I did video promo for high school sports including, of course, football. One of my nieces married a varsity player. She also played varsity football, but of the other sort: what gets called "soccer" in North America. And I have historically watched the Super Bowl. Pop cultural touchstone, really. My housemate in the early 1990s would host parties. His wing sauce was legendary.
I make a pretty good chilli.
Arlene F. Marks isn't particularly involved with football (her husband follows the CFL).
She has, however, published numerous novels and short stories, mostly in the science fiction and mystery genres-- and co-authored some non-fiction books for young writers. She lives in the tourist town of Collingwood, Ontario: think skis and snowshoes in winter, beaches and ziplines in summer, hikers, microbrew, a Great Lakes shipping history, and scenic caves. Close to the Bruce and Wasaga. And, if there's a local literary happening, think Arlene, retired teacher with striking blue eyes. I know her from conventions and other events.
I attended her most recent launch, online. The Stragori Deception is a standalone book in her Sic Transit Terra saga, though it also, apparently, sets up a potential new saga in that fictional universe. There was a door prize-- Login prize? The person whose name was drawn would be a character in her next novel, sort of.
That book follows Weekends Can be Murder, a mystery of Arlene's which I own but have not yet read. Same setting and genre, but they need not be read in order any more than Hercule Poirot's adventures.
Anyway, this sort-of sequel will feature sort-of me in a supporting role.
I spoke with the author today via Zoom. The novel is written, in fact. A recurring character, an officious official connected to the local cemetery, turns up throughout, often on the phone. Marks will revise his appearances, adding incidental characteristics and a name that's almost mine. So it's not as though the character will be me, as such. This isn't Robert Bloch and H.P. Lovecraft's notorious pact to do horrible things to characters based on each other, which they did in "The Shambler from the Stars" (Bloch, 1935) and "The Haunter of the Dark" (Lovecraft, 1936).* Entirely a bit of grotesque fun between two horror writers, unlike the middle school shenanigans into which diss track scraps can fall. Marks's "JD" won't even be a character inspired by me, the way writers often take real people as starting points. Still, it's fun to think of some version of myself in her book, which drops in the middle of next summer.
I'll miss its launch but they might have me phone in at some point. I also will take part in the CollingWord literary festival in the autumn, slipped into that temporal slot between summer and winter tourist rushes. I think it will be fun.
But I'll be skipping the 2025 Super Bowl.
We've had more than enough bombastic American spectacle already this year.
*Bloch turned these into a trilogy in 1950 with "The Shadow from the Steeple."