{"id":1814,"date":"2020-11-13T22:00:13","date_gmt":"2020-11-13T22:00:13","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/robertmangeot.com\/?p=1814"},"modified":"2021-04-08T14:36:33","modified_gmt":"2021-04-08T14:36:33","slug":"baby-im-a-star-behind-handed-on-a-gold-plate","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/robertmangeot.com\/?p=1814","title":{"rendered":"Baby, I’m a Star: Behind “Handed, on a Gold Plate”"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"My brush with media stardom came in television. Okay, sort of in television. I was on television frequently–but fleetingly per star turn. I was a staff auditor, and I had to monitor the evening Kentucky Lotto dozens of times over several months. This was before the Internet resembled anything like it does today. This was live TV, baby. Me, bright lights, wide audience. I\u2019m talking both the Louisville and Lexington TV markets, folks. Maybe even Nashville and Cincinnati. For three nights a week, after an hour or so of extensive machine and ball validation checks, the producer parked me stage left to stand there super-reassuring when the camera zoomed from wide toward the blower machines. We had an ex-model hostess, we had music and shimmery curtains, and for a heartbeat of intro time we had Bob so assured as Professional Auditor.<\/p>\n

One time during this stretch, this young woman at a bar said she knew me from somewhere. She asked where maybe that could\u2019ve been. Understand, women then as now didn\u2019t hit on me at bars. This was a sincere question. Sure, it could\u2019ve been small talk while we both waited for our next round. Or. Or it could\u2019ve been that she played the Lotto and my burgeoning celebrity persona had planted itself subliminally into Kentuckiana\u2019s minds. I recall saying something like, \u201cI do get on TV some.\u201d Well, she went her way, and I went mine. I bet she still tells her kids about the mystery auditor encounter. How she\u2019d never before or since felt so strangely able to rely.<\/p>\n

That was the kernel I wanted to explore with \u201cHanded, on a Gold Plate,\u201d out this month in Mystery Weekly Magazine<\/em><\/a><\/span>. What if someone in that same evening Lotto situation believed a glimpse-by-glimpse fame path was real? That international celebrity waited if the right auditor persona snatched the chance?<\/p>\n

\"\"Initially, I wrote it as a literary thing that embraced the premise absurdity. The first versions were flash fiction\u2014but not very good. It’d all come out in a single burp one New Year’s Day. The wannabe auditor star\u2014eventually Wade\u2014tried and of course failed miserably to nail his first performance. Funny, very inner-focused, but lacking an story arc. Actual emotional stakes.<\/p>\n

The thing had good bones, though. I’ve been writing long enough to sense a there when it’s there: fresh idea, interesting characters, a bam open and potential slambang ending. The strength of this story was its enclosed world. An off-kilter lens, behind-the-scenes drawing details, Wade\u2019s star drive and what\u2019s fueling that. If only it could be made to unfold on the page.<\/p>\n

That too came in flashes, over several years and several rejections. I don\u2019t think I\u2019ve ever retitled a piece more. Bit by bit, the story grew to present a fuller and more sympathetic Wade, but the arc and character shift problems remained. Of course, Wade kept failing in his big moment. Success isn\u2019t an option with so unrealistic a dream. This story was always about how he would fail. It took that time to realize that, instead of leaving in him defeated and embarrassed, he might get a little win. Not the one he wanted, but he hadn\u2019t earned that one. Couldn\u2019t. No, his dream might yet live on in a different way.<\/p>\n

That was the inner fix. Also, external forces needed to work against him. The only external forces in this world were there with him in the studio. Would the crew hate Wade so much they chose to sabotage him? Makes no sense. But what if he disrupted a way of doing things there? What if there were a crime?<\/p>\n

A mystery element. I could do that.<\/p>\n

Wade\u2019s character offered an interesting amateur sleuth \u2013 emphasis on amateur. He\u2019s legit good at numbers and smart enough to muddle through college and score an auditing firm job. That is not an easy job interview, I assure you. Then again, he\u2019s not the brightest guy, and he spends the entire story distracted and grappling with early-onset stage fright. He could miss a multi-person rigging conspiracy taking place right under his mustache-filtered nose. As he clues into something being wrong, now came stakes, pressure, a moral choice about what he might compromise for glory.<\/p>\n

This Pick Four will grant him a brush with fame, sure enough. Perhaps the infamy kind \u2013 he won\u2019t be asked back, let\u2019s just leave it at that. Yet with modern cheap celebrity, his major Lotto fail could open doors as well as close them. My Lotto run may be years behind me, but good old Wade still has so much auditing fame left to chase.<\/p>\n

#<\/p>\n

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NUGGETS<\/p>\n