Neal and the April Fools

White Collar and the fan fiction based on the show is often angsty, and sometimes it's good to give the characters and ourselves a break. Fluff and humor were my goals when I wrote the April Fool short story. Neal and friends playing pranks on each other, that's going to be lots of fun, right?

Warning for spoilers for the April Fool chapter of Caffrey Vignettes.

The initial premise was that Henry timed a trip to New York City over April Fool's Day in order to play a trick on Neal. I knew what the prank was, but even before I started writing I knew I wanted to make it more complex.

Who, me? The person who teased the Masterson Music case over multiple stories and resolved it in an epic that grew to a quarter of a million words long? Yeah, who would have guessed I like to complicate story lines? 😇😃

But back to my short story, what I had in mind seemed a simple enough addition. Neal's a smart guy and he knows Henry well. Of course he's going to guess that Henry has a prank in mind. What else would Neal do but decide to play his own prank?

Two pranksters trying to outdo each other. Twice the fun!

Then June spoke up while I outlined the plot. As Neal's landlady, was she doomed to have her home turn into a practical joke war zone once Henry moved to New York? She didn't want to live that, and I didn't want to write that, either.

As a result I added a third prankster that Neal and Henry weren't even aware of, derailing their pranks to pull off her own.

That should have been sufficiently complex, but then Noelle the psychologist made an observation. She pointed out that Neal and Henry are growing a bit older and more mature, settling into jobs and relationships, and they need to come to terms with how that's going to affect their friendship.

Goodness. That wasn't fluffy or funny. What happened to my cute plot bunny?

The story still has elements of humor, but in the end I wondered if the true April Fool's joke was on me.

Make that two April Fool's jokes. Not only did my characters keep my head spinning, but Silbrith got me, too. One of my story's pranks involved making people believe that June's home was haunted. Dressing Mozzie up as a Ghostbuster was certainly funny, but by the time I wrote April Fool, Silbrith was working on her crossover between our Caffrey Conversation AU and the show Supernatural. Now ghosts aren't a joke anymore, but are a likely occurrence in the Crossed Lines stories, where so far Neal and Peter have encountered vampires and witches.

And -- no April Fool's joke, I promise -- in early April we'll get to start reading Silbrith's latest entry in the Crossed Lines series. Fireflies at Midnight will be a great treat as Peter and Neal again face the supernatural. Will there be ghosts? You'll have to read it to find out.