Alton Benjamin ”Rooster” Franklin is tall, dark and displays decidedly bad judgment when it comes to women. His last girlfriend, in fact, turned out to be a vicious murderer who got blown away (quite deservedly) by police. Now Rooster`s in the market for a new romance.
But with no steady job-he spends most of his time playing the ponies and solving mysteries-it`s tough attracting Miss Right. That Rooster`s an ex-convict doesn`t help, even though the fictional former car thief has kept his nose clean for more than a decade.
Mystery novelist Randy Russell, Rooster`s creator, was firmly convinced that his crime-solving anti-hero`s best bet for finding love would be to place a real-life singles ad.
”Some of my friends have placed personal ads in newspapers and gotten very sincere responses,” he says. ”It`s just not something that Rooster would do, though.”
So Russell did it for him, with surprising results.
”All kinds of women seem to welcome the opportunity to have a romance with a fictional character,” he says. ”It`s definitely safe sex.”
A veteran publicist turned successful mystery writer, Russell cheerfully admits that he wasn`t thinking solely of Rooster`s welfare. He figured that a savvy singles ad also could make his own job easier (and, not incidentally, attract a little media attention).
”I have an idea for the plot of my next mystery, but I was having trouble coming up with a strong female character who would put up with Rooster and find him attractive,” says Russell, who has chronicled Franklin`s adventures in four books-”Hot Wire,” ”Blind Spot,” ”Caught Looking” and ”Doll Eyes”-since 1989.
”Creating a believable fictional character, even a minor one, is a major chore,” explains Russell, 38, who does his writing at home in Kansas City, Mo.
”Their background matters a lot, even though you don`t necessarily mention it much in the book. Whether someone grew up always getting what they wanted or never getting what they wanted or had a happy family life or a bad stepfather, for example-you need to know things like that. There was this void there.”
So, a little over a month ago, Russell took matters into his own hands and placed singles ads for Rooster in USA Today and the Kansas City Star. The ads, which cost around $80 each and ran one time, read as follows:
”HERO SEEKS HEROINE. Rooster Franklin, fictional hero of Doubleday mystery novels by Randy Russell, seeks real-life woman for romance of a lifetime. Select damsel will be featured in next Rooster Franklin mystery novel. Write: Rooster, Box 3538, Kansas City, KS 66103.”
Russell says he has received more than 70 responses, including a dozen from women who mistook the ad for simply a clever way for the author to meet women.
”Those were kind of embarrassing for my wife and me,” he says. ”I also have gotten three or four letters from women who thought I wanted them to create a fictional female character. I`m not interested in that. I`m looking for a real person who wants to become a character in the book.”
Facts and fantasy
What`s in it for the lucky damsel chosen as the model for Rooster`s main squeeze?
”Immortality,” Russell says, laughing. ”The opportunity to be in a novel. I hope to use the woman`s real name and elements of her life to create a fictional character. I`ll have to mold the character to the story, of course.
”But whatever the real-life woman`s goals are, what she does for a living, where she went to school-all of those things could be used. And I can set the book wherever they live, since Rooster tends to follow the horses, and there are race tracks in most parts of the country.
”The flip side is that the books are fiction, so the story could also be their fantasy,” Russell adds.
”We can take off 30 pounds or 30 years. Rooster is somewhere in his 30s, so if a woman is, say, in her 60s, I can use elements of her life 30 years ago. Or if someone has always wanted to be a sultry brunette and they`re not, we can make them that way. I`ll control the story line, but we can work together on what their character looks like.
”I`m interested in hearing from women with a strong sense of adventure, people who are themselves strong characters,” he says. ”Rooster can be quite overbearing, so I need someone with a strong sense of self and a certain degree of courage, because there is a certain risk involved in being a character in a murder mystery.”
Respondents have run the gamut of ages, occupations, lifestyles and literary preferences, Russell says.
”Some women have read my books; some haven`t,” says the author, who personally answers every letter, as either Rooster or himself. ”It doesn`t seem to matter.
”I heard from a young Mennonite woman from Webster, N.Y., whose life sounds like something out of the film `Witness.` She seemed like an incongruous match for Rooster, but the concept is fascinating. I`ve also gotten letters from a 70-year-old female pilot from Michigan who was a barnstormer in the 1930s, and a retired librarian from Missouri.
”I even got a letter from a guy suggesting that Rooster join the Kansas City Ski Club,” Russell says. ”He said the club had `1,100 lovely ladies, about 60 of whom are unmarried.` I don`t think Rooster would like to join a ski club, but it`s nice that someone was worried enough about him to suggest it.”
A 38-year-old ”biker mom” from the Kansas City area wanted to compare tattoos with Rooster, who got his nickname from the fighting cock he had emblazoned on his chest while in the slammer.
A 35-year-old financial technician from California wrote: ”I`m good enough for the part of you that wants to go straight and bad enough to keep you from feeling life`s not all it`s cracked up to be. I could use the excitement too; the guys I`ve been meeting lately are either one extreme or the other.”
One who really understands
A 40-ish management consultant with a doctoral degree expressed interest in Rooster but ended her letter with the warning, ”You might as well know that I won`t lend you any money.”
”She`s obviously someone who understands Rooster,” Russell says. ”I`m certainly going to follow up on her.”
Russell, who wrote what he describes as ”three very bad `young man finds himself` novels” before trying his hand at crime stories, traces his interest in mysteries back to childhood.
”I started reading Nancy Drew mysteries when I was 11,” he says. ”My favorite was `The Mystery at Lilac Inn.` I remember at one point in the book, Nancy was driving around in her roadster and stayed overnight at the Lilac Inn.
”There was a sentence that said, `Nancy undressed for bed.` I wanted the writer to tell me more! I guess some of it was youthful voyeurism, but I was fascinated by the idea that you could make characters do anything you wanted them to.”
Rooster, says Russell, is quite different from his creator. ”He`s cockier and wittier and thinner than I am. He doesn`t always say the right thing at the right time, but he certainly thinks it. He maintains a sense of humor at times when I couldn`t. He sticks around when I would leave. If his adventures were happening to me in real life, I would quit in the middle of them.”
Rooster, Russell adds, is a kind person, though his lack of tolerance for social niceties can make him seem a bit rough around the edges.
”He doesn`t believe in a lot of social bull. He`s non-traditional, almost an anti-hero. He wouldn`t be happy working 9 to 5. But the main thing is that he`s reached an age where he is hoping to fall in love with the right person.”
If Rooster sounds like your kind of guy, it`s not too late. Russell won`t choose the real-life model for Rooster`s girlfriend until next summer, right before he plunges into writing the mystery.
A word of warning: ”Nothing will be easy for the main characters,” he says. ”I never know how the books are going to end until I get there.
”But who knows?” Russell adds. ”It`s even possible that Rooster could bite the bullet in the next book, and his girlfriend could become the lead character. Anything can happen.”
