The Possibility in Fantasy

There are all kinds of celebrity nowadays, and I find it very exciting. Not because I want to be a celebrity--I really, really don't--but because the ease and variety of the path to becoming one makes my greatest fantasies possible.

Well, okay, not the one where Matthew McConaughey, Orlando Bloom, and Nathan Fillion all fight over who gets me. That one is pretty unlikely. Especially 'cause of the whole "happily married" thing.

But the wall between "regular person" and "celebrity" is virtually non-existent. Sure, there are distasteful ways to become a celebrity. You can be rich and bored enough to do crazy things to get attention and attract cameras. You can go on a reality show to display your most negative traits to the world so later you can be recognized in Wal-Mart. But more than ever, regular people have opportunities to showcase their talents and their personalities to the world.

Celebrity is wider-ranging than it used to be. Now it's not just the people whose faces are on the screen, the "beautiful people." It's also the ones who put them there--writers and directors like Joss Whedon and JJ Abrams and Eric Kripke--and even the fans who love them.

Take the Harry Potter fandom. It's huge, and there are tons of web sites dedicated to discussing and disseminating information about the books and movies. Last year, JK Rowling invited the leaders of the top two sites, The Leaky Cauldron and MuggleNet, to interview her in her home the day after the release of Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince. What followed was an amazing year. PotterCast and MuggleCast became two of the top podcasts, winning awards and launching teenage boys from Kansas and young mothers in Ohio to stardom. They attended the premiere of Goblet of Fire in New York last winter, and in a three-month span this year did an SRO live podcast in Las Vegas, attended the reading/Q&A of JK Rowling, Stephen King, and John Irving in New York city, won Podcast Awards in LA, and visited the set of Order of the Phoenix in the UK. Every live podcast they do starts with fifteen minutes of screaming, cheering fans who are as excited to see them as they would be to see Dan Radcliffe and Emma Watson. These are just regular people doing something they love and being hugely rewarded for it.

And that's why I think some of my fantasies are possible. Like the one where my awesome agent, who has some solid Hollywood connections, brings Orlando Bloom to the RWA Readers for Life Literacy Autographing to pick me up and go to dinner where we'll discuss his interest in making a movie of my book, Soul of the Dragon.

Or the one where Jensen Ackles gets a mortgage from Countrywide in Dallas. My brother works there, and occasionally reads this blog, so he'll know about my interest in the very talented actor from the TV show Supernatural and the upcoming indie film Ten Inch Hero, and when his boss asks him to be the last-minute fourth in a round of golf with Jensen and his father, Andy will tell Jensen about my books, which will of course lead to Jensen (and Jared Padalecki, who's hanging out with him at home while they're on haitus) meeting me for dinner when I fly down to visit my brother and his wife. He'd be perfect for the role of the hero in my new book, which would also make a great movie.

See how possible that is?