Mike Fleming

While I keep waiting for the wheels to fall off of the Charlie Sheen Crazy Train, the former Two and A Half Men star is encroaching on terrain reserved for Jane Austen and others who’ve had their works satirically updated with supernatural creatures in books like Pride And Prejudice And Zombies. Book editor Brendan Deneen has teamed with Can You Survive The Zombie Apocalypse? author Max Brallier to write Vatican Assassin Warlock. They are calling it a “dark satirical fantasy novella,” with a lead character named Charlie who has been built right out of Sheen’s own rantings.  The setup: an actor in Los Angeles is secretly an assassin for the Vatican, battling supernatural forces. The novella will be published as a 99 cent title this month through Deneen’s Ardden Entertainment, which until now has only published comics. “Max and I were sitting around and thought, what if all these things Charlie Sheen is saying are true, and basically we took all his ideas and forced a narrative around them,” Deneen said. “While filming Platoon, he’s kidnapped by evil scientists who experiment on him and inject him with radioactive tiger blood that turns him into a warlock. During his work for the Vatican, he’s injected with blood from these goddesses and that gives him the Adonis DNA.” While it seems the novel is just the latest in a parade of people exploiting Sheen, Deneen said: “He’s depicted as a compelling hero. The book is about an actor with this crazy party animal persona but in reality he’s a serious hero protecting humanity. Who wouldn’t want to be depicted as a hero warlock, battling the forces of evil?” Deneen’s a former movie exec who runs Macmillan Films, a shingle to get that publisher in the movie business. This is a separate venture, but he’s had no movie bites yet.

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