Many years ago, I wrote a fanfic called “Velveteen Hutch,” which I talked about in this post, and which you can read here on Flamingo’s archive. The story was, so they tell me, well-received, and the original publisher of that fanfic, Linda Cabrillo, wanted a companion piece even before the ink was dry on the first piece. That was some 15 years ago, and since then, I’ve had it in the back of my head that I would oblige her, which I have now done with a fanfic called “Corduroy Starsky,” the ordering information for which is available here.
The distance between the two fanfics can be explained by other fandoms taking over, as I went deeply into Blakes 7, The Professionals (songvids), and Dark Shadows (many, many stories). Then Real Life had its full share as I got a pair of Master’s degrees, bought a condo, sold that, bought a house built in 1902, refurbished that and sold it, and then bought another condo, which is a lot of moving! By the time I got back to the companion piece, I had lost touch with Starsky and Hutch, and felt rather adrift that I couldn’t just call up the passion I once had for them, let alone remember the canonical details that bring every fanfic to life.
With my publisher’s handholding, I managed to write something that we both felt was not only a good companion to the first, but that also captured Starsky’s devotion to Hutch. I wrote it from Starsky’s point of view, which had a very different feel from Hutch’s because, naturally, Starsky has a different outlook on life than Hutch does. I always felt he was the more serious of the two, on the inside, while playing the clown to hide this. His recall of events is much more linear than Hutch’s, plus, he became very focused on not only when events happened, but what they meant. This was a strong contrast to Hutch’s stream of consciousness memory of the same timeframe, that is, from the time they met to the events that happened after Gunther and Lionel. I still feel that I didn’t do the boys justice, but what is there that is good I owe to several sources.
First, there are the DVDs of the original show, uncut and commercial free. This includes Season 4, amazingly enough, and the credit for that must go to Ben Stiller, Owen Wilson, David Soul, and Paul Michael Glaser for making the Starsky and Hutch movie that was SO much fun and brought this wonderful fandom back to living and breathing color, and allowed the fourth season to be produced, which, as I hear, was not a sure thing. Watching the eps brought it all back to me, how cool this show is, how fun the boys are to see in action. And so crisp, so clean! Such a nice upgrade from my old VHS tapes.
Next, I owe a debt of gratitude to my silent resource Pepper Ckua and her brilliant Compendium that contains every factoid EVER conceived, written, imagined, shown, told, or filmed about Starsky and Hutch in Bay City. You would not BELIEVE it unless you see it, how complete and in depth this website is, how ginormous and richly detailed.
And then, of course, there’s Keri, my publisher, who has untapped amounts of enthusiasm for this project, and was wonderful to work with in a way that I remember fanfic publication being. Now, if she’d only hang her fanart…