TELL ME A STORY.

Read my post, Tell Me a Story, today at Romancing the Blog!

IDEAS UNDER SIEGE.

Like many people, I’ve been following with much interest the lawsuit filed by Michael Baigent and Richard Leigh, two of the three co-authors of The Holy Blood and the Holy Grail (in the U.S., Holy Blood, Holy Grail), against Random House, publisher of The Da Vinci Code and whose author, Dan Brown, has been a central figure in the proceedings. (Ironically, Random House also published Holy Blood, Holy Grail.)

Holy Blood, Holy Grail's third co-author, Henry Lincoln, declined to take part in the lawsuit.

Closing arguments in the case wrapped up on Monday, with the verdict not expected to be handed down for several weeks.

What makes this case so engrossing is that it may have bearing in the future on how far authors of fiction can go in relying on nonfiction sources for their background material and plotlines.

Holy Blood, Holy Grail focuses on the premise that Jesus Christ married Mary Magdalene and begat children with her, and that following Mary’s immigration to what is now France, these children intermarried with the Merovingian dynasty, thus preserving Jesus’s bloodline unto the present day, with said bloodline becoming known as the Sang Real (Royal Blood) or Holy Grail.

As those who study esoterica know, these ideas are not new. Rather, they have been around for centuries. What Holy Blood, Holy Grail principally did was to popularize them, tying them up with a shadowy "secret" society called the Priory of Sion (which organization is now claimed to have been largely debunked), and the Church of St. Mary Magdalene at Rennes-le-Chateau, in Southern France.

Regardless of whether one believes all this or not, esoterica and its associated "secret" societies (since so much is known about so many of them, they are scarcely secret anymore) make fascinating subjects for fiction, and Brown is certainly not the first—or even the best—author to employ them, or to utilize the theories about Jesus and Mary Magdalene as the plot or subplot of a novel or other work.

So, is this lawsuit simply a case of "Where’s there’s a hit, there’s a writ"? It will be interesting to see how London High Court Justice Peter Smith rules.

HAPPY ST. PATRICK'S DAY!

It is said that on St. Patrick's Day, everybody's Irish. But I'm proud to be an Irish-American 365 days of the year.

Because so much of my family tree on both sides has been traced, I know that many of its branches go back to Ireland, principally to Counties Cork and Dublin. My son, Shane, is especially fascinated by our ancestor Daniel Murphree, who, during the late sixteenth century, owned a whiskey distillery in Dublin.

For more about the Murphrees, as well as some of my other Irish ancestors, visit Ravenscroft Castle's Armory.

Happy St. Patrick's Day!

AND THE WINNER IS...

Today at Romancing the Blog, Abby Godwin talks about going Cold Turkey when it comes to turning off the television.

Now, I have to admit that I've never been a particularly big fan of TV. Perhaps if when I was growing up, I had been glued to it the way most of my friends were, I would feel differently about it. But in our house, it was routinely referred to by my father as the "boob tube" and the "idiot box," and he did not allow it to be turned on, except for two hours on Friday nights.

So, to me, TV has always been something of a treat, not to be engaged in mindlessly. For that reason, I'm still pretty selective about what I watch. My husband, John, is even more adamant about what he will and will not watch, and if something doesn't pique his interest immediately, he more often than not jumps up and disappears into our office or his workshop.

As a result, in our house, every single TV except for that of my son, Shane, is routinely set on a news channel, because most of the time, that's what we watch. (Shane's own TV usually has a video game on it.)

Still, like everything else, there are exceptions to this rule. For the past several Sunday nights, I've been caught up in Bleak House, broadcast by PBS, and the truth is that if it hadn't ended last weekend, I'd be watching it tonight, instead of the Academy Awards. But since Bleak House has concluded, I've decided that I will tune in to see the Oscars.

For many years now, just like other families, my own has engaged in the game of predicting who will win the Oscars. Sometimes, our private "ballots" are wildly diverse, and sometimes, a clear "winner" emerges for each category. Then there are years like this one, where our results are mixed, with us being almost unanimous in our picks in some categories and all over the board in others.

This year, our most hotly contested races are for the Best Supporting Actor and Best Actress awards (for simplicity's sake, we always limit our picks to the Best Supporting Actor, Best Supporting Actress, Best Actor, Best Actress, Best Director, and Best Picture categories). If one of us is especially undecided about some category, we allow a second choice for it, but consider that you have "fudged" if you've had to use one of your second choices to get all the winners right. *g*

So, just for fun, here are my family's predictions for the Oscars (note that our selections are not necessarily based on who we personally would choose to win, but, rather, on who we believe the Academy will actually pick):

Best Supporting Actor: Among us, George Clooney (Syriana) is ahead by a single vote.
Best Supporting Actress: Rachel Weisz (The Constant Gardener) lacks just one vote to make her our unanimous choice.
Best Actor: Philip Seymour Hoffman (Capote) lacks just one vote to make him our unanimous choice.
Best Actress: In this category, we have a tie between Reese Witherspoon (Walk the Line) and Keira Knightley (Pride and Prejudice). But if we add in our second choices, it's Witherspoon who walks away with the Oscar.
Best Director: Ang Lee (Brokeback Mountain) lacks just one vote to make him our unanimous choice.
Best Picture: Crash lacks just one vote to make it our unanimous choice.

Do you agree or disagree with my family's picks? Who do you think will actually win? I'll be tuned in to find out. Will you?