There are people out there that you never meet, but who have a profound effect on your life, in ways they will never know.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Well, unless you have readers who will mail that person the dirty book you wrote with them in mind. Or a friend who will approach them at a convention and tell them about the dirty book you wrote with them in mind.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
In 2012, when I started writing my book, The Boss,<\/em> there was only one choice in my mind for the “role” of Neil Elwood: Anthony Stewart Head. Since Buffy the Vampire Slayer<\/em> is about 17% of my total personality, and Merlin<\/em> a solid chunk, as well, there was only one middle-aged Englishman I could possibly imagine. I gave Neil the looks of season four Giles and the leather gloves of season one Uther. I pictured each scene acted out as if I was watching a movie (a huge part of my process), running each line of dialogue through my mind in Head’s Doctor Who Confidential<\/em> voice (it’s a crime he never got a chance to play The Doctor).<\/p>\n\n\n\n As I posted chapters of the serial, and later, after the book came out, readers fell in love with the posh-but-somehow-still-hip middle-aged dad in a highly problematic relationship with his much younger assistant (which, I want to make very clear, was not ripped-off from his series You, Me, and Them<\/em>, in which he played a posh-but-somehow-still-hip middle-aged dad in a highly problematic relationship with a much younger veterinary assistant, which came out the same year). Because I’d been so open about who’d inspired him, and because I’d spent years on the internet professing my undying crush on the man, some readers sent poor Mr. Head copies of the book. I don’t know if he ever received any of them, but when I had the opportunity to ask a Buffy<\/em> cast member, Amber Benson, if he’d take hurtful offense to a stranger writing smut with him in mind, she assured me, “No, he would love that!”<\/p>\n\n\n\n Later, my friend, Petra, met him at a convention and got a photo signed for me. She told him to his face about The Boss<\/em> and my huge crush on him, and Benson was right: he was absolutely not offended, and said I should write a film treatment for the book. So, even celebrities don’t really understand the book-to-film pipeline and how little control authors have over it, which is nice information to have.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The photo he signed to me went into my collection of other memorabilia, both autographed and unautographed, which Petra and readers have gifted to me over the years: Numerous signed photographs. An Uther action figure. A weird commemorative Giles plate (which showed up in the background of my daughter’s viral Doctor Who<\/em> reaction, which Head retweeted). A copy of the novelization of the coffee commercials he starred in during the late 1980s. A two-CD set of songs inspired by the coffee commercials.<\/em> If there is niche Anthony Head memorabilia, I own it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n