When Fiction Becomes Reality

Confession time: Castle is one of my favorite shows. Or was. Following eight seasons the final episode aired recently. In the future I must satisfy my detective obsession with reruns.

 In the TV series Richard Castle is a mystery writer and consultant with the New York City police department. He works closely with a detective (a fictional character played by a real actress - Stana Katic - portraying a NYPD detective). Eventually the two become a romantic item…

The show is fiction.

Richard Castle is a fictional character: a mystery novel writer.

Straightforward enough.

But things quickly get confusing.

Visit Amazon or walk into your nearest bookstore and a novel – a real book - written by Richard Castle can be purchased. The writer of these novels is not the Richard Castle seen on TV.

The actor portraying the character Richard Castle is Nathan Fillion. The real novels – real because they are actual books – are written by another person using the pseudonym Richard Castle.

So there is:

Richard Castle - fictional character,

Nathan Fillion - actor portraying Richard Castle on TV and elsewhere, and

Unknown writer or writers – author(s) of books using Richard Castle pseudonym.

The actor Nathan Fillion

The actor Nathan Fillion appears as Richard Castle on the novel’s book jackets. He is pictured on the official website. He participates in book signings - genuine book signings, not faux ones portrayed on the TV series.

Who writes the books? No idea. No one knows. I researched the question but came up empty and will not speculate because everyone has a different theory.

Richard Castle’s first faux mystery Heat Wave was published as a hardcover book in 2009. The book debuted at # 26 on the New York Times Best Seller List and eventually moved up to # 6. There are two series of books attributed to the writer Richard Castle: Derrick Storm novels and Nikki Heat mysteries, as well as a number of graphic novels.

Perplexed? I certainly am.

I have not purchased any Richard Castle books or borrowed Richard Castle books from the library or downloaded a Richard Castle book on Kindle. I do not plan on reading any of the mysteries. My bookshelf already overflows with tomes awaiting my eager hands.

Summarizing: A TV character transforms into a real author writing books first introduced on the fictional TV show. The actor, employing his character's guise, is pictured on the books’ jackets and does book signings and other book promotions. No one knows who writes the books. The author remains anonymous.

The world gets more confusing every day…