In less than a month, one of my favorite characters is going to be going away. With Stana Katic leaving the TV show Castle following this season, Kate Beckett will be no more.
This sucks, for several reasons — most of which have nothing to do with writing. But in a lot of ways, I have Kate Beckett to thank for my books, Bounty and Blood Ties.
More than one reader has told me that Jill Andersen, my protagonist in those novels, reads similar to Kate Beckett. That’s not by accident, either; when I discovered Castle a little more than a year and a half ago, something triggered whenever I saw Beckett on-screen.
See, Bounty has been a labor of love since I was in high school… emphasis, more often than not, on the lab
or part. Constant re-writes, reboots, do-overs… I could never really get the character, or her stories, right.
But along came this sometimes-lighthearted procedural about a mystery novelist who followed around a cop under the pretense of research… and everything just started to click. Jill started to click. I started to click.
I wasn’t in a writing funk before discovering Castle, but that show really turned up the proverbial wick. Adding the murder mystery element to Jill’s universe really helped things fall into place, and Jill herself was suddenly far more well-rounded and dynamic than she had been before.
In a lot of ways, Jill is similar to Beckett… but in a lot of ways, they’re also polar opposites. But were it not for Beckett — and Katic’s remarkable portrayal of her — I’m not sure I’m sitting here with two published novels under my belt and several more in the works.
I’ll be sad to see Beckett go — and take down a show that I had come to love in the process. But I’m thankful for the character and the actress, because they really helped bring forth a creative renaissance on my part. I’m a better, more confident writer because of Castle, and thanks to Beckett, Jill is a much more interesting character than I could’ve ever dreamed.
Besides, now that Katic is leaving Castle, maybe she could take the role of Jill should Bounty
wind up on Netflix.
Hey, a guy can dream, can’t he?
J.D. Cunegan 