Series Reading

Ever since I was little, I've read book series...es. It started off with The Sleepover Friends and a little of The Babysitters Club and from there graduated on to series...es with multiple authors like Star Trek: The Next Generation and Dragonlance. Of course, you know how much I love The Dark Tower Series, not to mention The Dark Is Rising and Harry Potter.

Oh, and there's The Chronicles of Narnia and The Lord of the Rings. But not so much, really.

I just enjoy, more than anything, becoming attached to these characters. A friend of mine in college said he couldn't get into Harry Potter (during the time our entire magazine staff was passing around my copy of The Goblet of Fire) because it involved getting committed to the characters. Of course, he had at that time a reputation for dating all the women in the department. I remember another friend saying she was going to be the one who changed him, and then he dumped her like a month later. What does it say about our characters by the books we choose?

I also get attached to celebrities. Vehemently. And always older men. It started with strange small crushes when I was little...like Ed Begley F...ing Jr. You read that. Transylvania 6-5000 anyone? While my sisters were swooning for Jeff Goldblum I was in love with Ed. Begley. F...ing. Jr. (I still, stupidly, get butterflies when I see him.)

Then it was Garth Brooks. Then Jay Leno. Now it's Tim Gunn. Attached.

The heroes of my favorite books are all men. Roland from Dark Tower. Commander Riker and then Lt. Commander Data from Star Trek. Not just from series...es, but also from novels in general. Aureliano Buendia from One Hundred Years of Solitude. Agamemnon from The Iliad. The author Jorge Luis Borges (most brilliant mind in all of literature). What does this obsession with men say about me?

I know what one person out there is thinking. And, well, yeah, I do. But I've been thinking a lot about what one of my college professors asked me about my writing: "Why don't you ever have female characters?" My main characters are always men. My book series, the one I'm writing, has two male leads and one female lead. She isn't the main character (although close). When her parts were a separate (somewhat autobiographical) novel, I felt like it would get critical acclaim but that I wouldn't love it. The series I'm writing is one I feel like I could love, like I could write it forever, but I think it's going to get a lot of flack. It's...grand, and I mean that in the sense that magical shit along with preposterous shit is going to happen, but...it's my fantasy. Even though the female character is in a sense me plopped down into my own fantasy I feel closest to the two men. I don't know how to describe it, which is my job, you know?

I'm just trying to make heads or tails with what I'm doing as I plug along in my writing. I feel like it's silly to feel like I have to justify why I'm writing this series. It goes back to what one of my favorite professors asked me once, somewhat painfully, "Why would anyone ever write this story?" I think now that he was trying to get me to answer important questions about my purpose in my own writing - was I in it for entertainment or critical acclaim or what - but at sometimes I worry that he meant the story was just plain awful. I don't know.