15 Feb 2012, 8:39 am
15 Feb 2012, 2:34 pm
This interview was done for Chaplin Books in July 2011, but is still fairly current and explains more of the background to the story. In particular, please note that my statement that Drusilla Revenant contains an unbelievable twist which could turn fan perceptions of the Buffyverse upside down is true:
1) How did you first get interested in Buffy the Vampire Slayer?
“Without giving too much of Dear Miss Landau (DML) away, let’s just say that Buffy’s tales of knights, demons, redemption and quests, relocated from the green and pleasant fields of King Arthur’s England and Hammer Films’ Transylvania to the stucco and adobe-adorned small town streets of Sunnydale struck a deep and abiding chord with me. The “all for one and one for all” camaraderie of the Scoobies was a badly-needed contrast to some of the nasty sides of human nature I was seeing at the time. Buffy really was a Chinese of light during a very dark time, and did lead to a real-life quest.”
2) What appealed to you about the character of Drusilla in particular?
“The absolute truth about my relationship with Drusilla is reserved for DML, but I will say that despite being an insane demonic killer, underneath the mask of the vampire was a shy, sweet girl who was a lot more pleasant than the racist xenophobes myself and a black colleague had been putting up with.
“In a word, the demon was kinder than the human, and I loved her dearly for it.
“As people with autism are generally not that empathic, I would say that my abnormally strong emotional connection with my dear old Dru is worth some academic study.”
3) You went on to write a trilogy of novellas about Drusilla. Is this when you first made contact with Juliet Landau?
“DML will detail the stops along the way to Sunset Boulevard, but when I began to write Drusilla’s Roses, the first tale of the trilogy, I basically went on a complete creative bender. I wrote, I would say, not a story about Dru, but the story which should have been written for her at the time of Buffy but wasn’t.
“In my opinion, the character of Drusilla had not been developed as fully as the other members of her vampire family – Spike, Angel and Darla – had been. It was as if Dru herself chose me to finish the job. I know how strange that sounds, but that’s how it felt at the time. There are any number of technically proficient writers around, but she needed someone who also loved her passionately, with all his heart and soul, and would fight to the last drop of his blood to bring her back.
“She needed her noble knight, and she found him.
“Then, when it was all over, there was nothing else I could do except put Dru in the care of her creator. So I sent Drusilla’s Roses to Hollywood, to an actress I did not know, whose middle name was Rose…”
4) You travelled alone across the US to meet her: what aspects of this did you, as an autistic man, find most difficult?
“You’d think the tale behind my last answer would be extraordinary enough for one lifetime, but yes, despite being tired, damaged, middle-aged and autistic, I broke with my routines and travelled alone across America.
“I am high functioning and I had done it before, but that had been twenty years earlier; and there’s many a man who remembers the days of his youth and dreams he may return to them, but knows deep down they’re gone for good.
“I mentioned quests before, and every grating moment I ground through the bureaucracy, the grudging return to shared dorms in backpacker hostels, the long roads across the US and the crossing of the Mojave, the image of my lady was ahead of me.
“Drusilla was my guide along the way, but Juliet was my muse.
“No great experience comes without hardship, and any man who embarks on such a road must be willing to fight to the last drop of his blood.
“And I told her, not long after, that I’d do it all again in a moment, even if I had to walk.”
5) What was the best moment of your trip?
“The original aim of the trip was to see the Californian locations I’d used for Drusilla’s Roses – Point Lobos and the house on Candlewood Drive – but in the end it was all for my dear Miss Landau.
“The best moment? Each and every time I saw her was the best moment.”
6) When were you first diagnosed as autistic?
“2002.”
7) What strengths do you think Autists possess that ‘ordinary’ people don’t have?
“It is an irony of the modern world that the greatest achievements are often only achieved after fifteen to twenty years of focused work, and often only by the minority who can achieve such focus. In general, the majority of ordinary neurologically-typical people (known as neuro-typicals) tend to be less focused and more prone to multi-tasking than the minority of people with autism. The majority of people are therefore (and I do stress that this is a huge generalisation) less likely to achieve exceptional results in a single area of study. With my “Asperger focus” (the name for the intense focus Autists can bring to bear on a single subject) helping me to develop my writing ability, it was perhaps more easy for me to reach the level I did than it would have been for a neuro-typical.”
Have you always been interested in writing?
“Writing has always been my best asset, but I’m not always interested in it. I also like girls. Especially shy vampire brunettes. The latent ability, however, was always there. I won a Daily Express short story competition in my early teens, won College Colours as a result of something interesting I did in my creative writing course, and edited the script for a film which won Glasgow University’s 1993 MacTaggart Prize. Then – after fifteen years trying to write the Great Scottish Novel – came Dru.”
9) Do you have a writing routine?
“I ought to stress to every young writer that they should be focused, diligent and practice every day; and that it is 95% perspiration and 5% inspiration. All of this is true, but I’ve grown increasingly tired of literary pretension, jargon and writers’ groups over the years.
“Granted, my creative writing tutor was a great man, and I did do my twenty years’ apprenticeship, but I broke every rule in the book writing Drusilla’s Roses while Dru looked happily over my shoulder. I had no plan, did not do that many drafts, and most of the time had no idea what I was going to do next. The primal beast got out, it was like Rocky Balboa going after Ivan Drago, and it was the greatest creative experience of my life.”
10) What’s your next project?
“Well, my story gets even more incredible. After I finished Drusilla’s Roses, Dru refused to allow herself to be pensioned off, so I then wrote Drusilla’s Redemption and Drusilla Revenant.
“Roses and Redemption are in Drusilla’s section of the Buffy writers’ guild web site, Charm School version: lessons in etiquette, but Drusilla Revenant has never been seen.
“This is because I think I found an unfinished story arc from the original TV series and, as well as incorporating Juliet Landau’s two-part Drusilla tale from Angel 24-25, Drusilla Revenant developed this arc and ends with an unbelievable twist which may well change fan perceptions of the Buffyverse.
“I also gave Dru a happy ending. I thought this time I’d finally managed to pension the old girl off, but yet again she found her way back. So once DML is finished I intend to write the fourth part of the trilogy, in which Spike and Dru go back into action again…
“There is a possibility the trilogy may be published and, at the risk of tilting recklessly at windmills, I think it (or elements from it) would be a better plot for the new Buffy movie than the current script which (due to a contractual stipulation) will probably just send the Slayer back to high school, without most of the beloved characters from the TV series.
“On a different tack, Dear Miss Landau was first conceived as a film as I was walking down the hill from Candlewood Drive. There is plot, theme, location and spectacle galore. Imagine Rain Man meeting Notting Hill via 84 Charing Cross Road, punctuated by a poetic set of articles written while I was going across the US, running for L.A. to meet the best and most beautiful gal in all the world one Sunday morning in March, on a boulevard west of Sunset…
“Any film producers out there listening?”
James A. F. Christie
21st July 2011
25 Feb 2012, 9:53 pm
25 Feb 2012, 11:00 pm
25 Feb 2012, 11:11 pm
26 Feb 2012, 1:25 am
26 Feb 2012, 7:50 pm
26 Feb 2012, 8:00 pm
CHAPTER THIRTY-EIGHT
A date for breakfast
Friday March 12, 2010.
I always call it the last day. The day I made the crossing. I didn’t lead a wagon train or drive an overloaded jalopy. But I went the same way, crossing the Mojave to Los Angeles.
I woke up on time for the bus, broke my fast with free pancakes and coffee, and was quickly on my way. I remember the clear desert air, thin and cool, and breathing easy, as if it were yesterday, as I walked the 13 blocks back to the glitz and found my way to the Greyhound depot on South Main Street.
I’d long forgotten that I didn’t need to go into Central LA. I could take the bus direct to Hollywood. It set out a little later than I’d expected, so I walked back across South Main and found a Starbucks. There was no free Wi-Fi there. Apart from my pancakes and coffee, nothing was free in Las Vegas. A hotel receptionist had explained that to me, too bored even to talk to me as soon as he realised I wasn’t going to be spending any money.
So I was still blind. Juliet the Notebook couldn’t talk to Juliet the Landau. I wondered what was passing through her mind, turning on her computer and seeing nothing. I wondered what she would think of me if and when we met, and I had no answers.
Perhaps pilgrims on the mountain road to Calvary had felt the same way. I did not know, and the uncertainty, my inadequacy, twined deeper into my guts. What a fool I’d been to think I could do this. There was no future. I would be borne back into the past.
She had never let me down, though. That was the funny thing. Never a failure to respond. Sometimes no more than a happy face and a pair of initials. Other times bouncy and cheery, with exclamation marks galore. A kindness which had warmed me.
How very scared I was of everything, and in the end how very scared I was of her. This woman I knew, and did not know, and loved.
I got up. Time to take the bus to the place of broken dreams. I walked past the hungover revellers straggling up the street, past a bunch of kids playing basketball in the lot behind the Hotel Nevada, and found my bus. I sat down next to a girl named Precious and we headed out into the desert, climbing to 4,000 feet above sea level on California Highway 15 before beginning the long descent to the sea by way of Baker, Barstow and Dunn.
The plains were seared white, the rocks black as coal. I saw the cacti and the sagebrush, and faraway studs of fence poles deep in the golden pink desert. And I thought I glimpsed the faintest blue-white tinge on the horizon.
I didn’t see the sign welcoming me to California, but the bus rolled into Barstow at lunchtime for a half-hour stop. I spotted a drive-thru Starbucks on the other side of the road and jog-trotted across, logging on to Juliet the Notebook’s Wi-Fi and looking, once again, for the other Juliet.
There was a message in my inbox:
From: Juliet Landau Sent: 12 March 2010 09:26 To: James Christie Subject: Schrader Boulevard
Hi James. I hope this reaches you! Do you want to meet up on Sunday for breakfast at 10.30? I got Drusilla’s Redemption and look forward to reading it when I come up for air from all the TAKE FLIGHT stuff. My producing partner read it and loved it!! ! He’d love to join us as well. 
Juliet
From: James Christie Sent: 12 March 2010 12:42 To: Juliet Landau Subject: Schrader Boulevard
Dear Miss Landau
In Barstow. See you for breakfast!
Best wishes
James
From: Juliet Landau Sent: 12 March 2010 23:23 To: James Christie Subject: Schrader Boulevard
See you then!
Juliet
See you then. The plain and simple words were like poetry. To meet a star on Sunset Boulevard one Sunday morning in March. Some moments come only once in a lifetime.
The bus went on its way to the coast, past the shining white planes at Edwards Air Force Base and the town of Mojave, baked quietly dry by the heat. We came over the San Gabriel mountains and there was Los Angeles, the hazy low-slung urban sprawl spreading down to the sea, topped with a high, close-clustered central set of skyscrapers.
The sunlit city with its sparkling spires.
Green and pleasant suburbs replaced dry desert and scrub as we dropped down into the San Fernando Valley. The real Candlewood Drive was close, and it was not far to go ’til Hollywood.
All the places I’d never seen, or thought I’d never see again. The violent, dreamlike city on the edge of forever to which I’d sent Drusilla’s Roses, never expecting a reply.
A female passenger in her forties began to panic as we neared Hollywood Boulevard. She was intelligent, certainly. Neuro-typical, definitely, and had never travelled independently in her life. She’d always had a timetable and itinerary worked out for her in advance. She had never been out on her own until now, and all the atavistic fears I knew so well were crashing in on her for the first time.
The driver and I reassured her she would be able to pick up her connecting bus in Hollywood, and I was bemused to hear myself talking like the voice of experience, telling her it was quite natural to feel unnerved arriving in a strange city late’ish of an evening...
You don’t know the half of it, lady, I thought. Hard for an NT. Hell for an Autist.
I left her by the correct bay to catch her connection and walked down to the hostel on Schrader, glancing at the palm trees on the sidewalk and the Hollywood Hills in the distance.
I was there, and the song was alive in my soul.
27 Feb 2012, 9:16 am
08 Mar 2012, 9:14 pm
09 Mar 2012, 8:45 am
15 Mar 2012, 1:56 pm
16 Mar 2012, 5:54 am
16 Mar 2012, 1:32 pm
20 Mar 2012, 2:26 pm
26 Mar 2012, 3:32 pm
