The journey of James Christie, and the tale of two books

I met James Christie through a fan group for Juliet Landau (Martin Landau's daughter), in my search to interview Juliet here on my blog. James has a remarkable story of his own in his pursuit to write his own novella about her character, Drusilla, from Buffy the Vampire Slayer series,DRUSILLA'S ROSES.

Though he has yet to get the green light for his novella, he has written a non-fiction book about  Juliet Landau, and his journey to not only for Juliet's blessing on his work, but to build a friendship with one of his biggest inspirations.

Where author meets his muse...


You were diagnosed with Aspergers in 2002, what is it that you made you decide to see a doctor?

I’d been running my own life, working two jobs and also acting as administrative carer for my mother after my father’s death in 1999. I didn’t know I was autistic and I didn’t know how hard my brain had to work just to get through the day. It is also vital for other people to talk to people with autism using blunt and clear language. I was taking my mother on holiday, had to make all the arrangements, had no mental rest and couldn’t get a straight answer out of her about anything. Metaphorically speaking, I hit the wall.
I couldn’t cope any more, sat down and simply demanded of her that she speak clearly to me at all costs. I spent most of the holiday trying to pull myself together and a few weeks later happened to read an article about Asperger Syndrome, the mild form of autism. It struck a chord, I got suspicious, and I went to my doctor. He referred me to a psychologist who diagnosed me, finding out that my information-processing ability was particularly deficient.


How long have you been a fan of Buffy the Vampire Slayer?

Buffy the Vampire Slayer slowly began to captivate me between 1999-2004 simply because it was a superb, interesting and different TV show. I didn’t begin to take regular notice of it until it was in its third season and, if it had not been for a complex chain of luck, timing and coincidence which led me to Drusilla and the actress who portrayed her, it might not have gone any further than that.
It was a long, slow process. I think the first time I remember consciously contemplating Juliet Landau was when I saw her in Ed Wood about ten years ago and recognised her from Buffy…


What inspired you to write, Drusilla's Roses?

That is a long story and really deserves to be part of Buffy mythology, so I’ll try to tell it here. As recounted in Dear Miss Landau, I’d had a great deal of trouble with a certain large public-sector organisation for whom I’d worked. They made no adaptations for my autism, literally tortured me and forced a black African friend and colleague of mine out of work. Myself and James Doherty of the National Autistic Society Scotland (NAS) fought them to a standstill but I was left neurologically damaged by the experience and deeply-disillusioned with human nature.

Quite seriously, I felt like Rocky Balboa would have after 15 rounds taking punishment from Ivan Drago in Rocky IV. My right hand was actually shaking, my thought processes were even slower than usual and I think, on occasion, my speech was slurred. I was, in a way, punchy.

At about that time, I’d begun to notice Drusilla in Buffy season five, I’d just bought my beloved Buffy DVD boxset and Dru was beginning to grow on me. As I later wrote in Dear Miss Landau:

The most important things in life are not easily seen at first glance.

I began to see Dru’s vulnerable side and began to read Drusilla fan-fiction; and, crucially, it was only in the few Dru and Xander fan-fiction stories (Thank You Miss Edith, Boundless Love, Xander’s Secret etc.) that Dru’s sweet and gentle side showed itself most clearly. I also began to try and restore myself. I watched one Buffy episode and cleaned one part of my flat every night. In autistic terms, I re-established my routines, and the Scoobies’ attitudes were a balm to my damaged brain and beliefs. Their altruistic attitudes and demeanour (albeit fictional) were a welcome contrast to the loathsome real-life behaviour I’d seen.
And even Drusilla the deranged, murderous vampire had a nicer and kinder side to her than some of the humans I’d recently known…

So the threads of fate’s tapestry began to come together, and I began to care for Dru.

After about 18 months, in about late 2008, I decided (not terribly seriously, I must admit) to write a story about Drusilla which would answer a couple of questions which, up until then, had never quite been resolved:

What had happened to the Scoobies just after the closing credits of Chosen? Buffy season eight only commenced months later, ironically in Scotland…

Whatever happened to Drusilla? At the time, my dear old Dru had not been seen except in flashback since season five and, unlike the rest of the fanged four (Angel, Spike and Darla) she certainly had not been redeemed.

So I thought I’d have a go. Simple as that. Only it wasn’t quite that simple. I was already an experienced writer. I’d won my first short story competition when I was 13, I had a degree in creative writing and I’d had 15 years practice trying to write the Great Scottish Novel.

I was actually about ready to do my best work, and it did feel a bit like Dru chose me to tell her story.

Chosen?

The right man, in the right place, at the right time.

I’ve said it before: it may seem like cliché, and I have never disputed there are many other writers as or more technically proficient than myself, but it was as if Dru needed something more than that. Someone who loved her with all his heart and soul, and would fight to the death for her.

Again, it may seem like ridiculous macho cliché, but before the 15th round in Rocky IV. Balboa’s trainer exhorts him to knock Drago out with the words:

“All your strength, all your power, all your love, everything you’ve got!”

I didn’t ask anyone’s opinion about the tale which would become Drusilla’s Roses, I didn’t plan out what I was going to do, and the moment I started writing I was like a man possessed, and I loved every moment of it.

Not long before, Miss Landau had mentioned how she’d been “drawn into Dru’s rich, dark world.” Now the same thing had happened to me, and in spades.

It was an explosive experience, as if Dru (like the writer’s muse of myth) really had got inside my head, turned my creativity full on and was in no mood to stop until her tale was told.

And that’s the way it was. I worked non-stop for two months in my Glasgow tenement flat, telling the tale of Dru and Xander, and of the house on Candlewood Drive.

The creative process repaired the neurological damage, gave me that strange connection some writers have with their most beloved characters and delivered the tale of Dru which I’d like to think she wanted to be told...

No fan saw it at the time, although I ran the final chapter of Roses past the fine and decent people in my new office (I nicknamed them my Scoobies) to get second opinions.

I then contacted Meltha, a superb Drusilla fan-fiction writer and webmaster of Dru’s section of the Buffy writers’ guild. Meltha agreed to beta read (edit) Roses and without that help, Roses would have been far less than it became. I’d say Meltha is the best Dru editor in the world and, yes, together we were quite the dream team.

By early April 2009, Roses was ready and I was restored, so then I had to decide what to do next…


What made you decide on writing a love story between Drusilla, and Xander? This didn't seem unlikely to you?

In 2007-2008, I was mentally pulped, disillusioned and damaged. Dru and Xander’s stories served to remind me of the better sides of human nature. There really was an absolutely lovely aspect to her nature that a few fans had seen. Jason Thompson and Mahaliem were among early influences, but an excerpt from Xander’s Secret by Zillagirl rather captured the Drusilla I came to know:
In Xander’s Secret, Xander met Drusilla in London six months after the end of Chosen. Despite the fact she was one of the evil undead whom he was sworn to slay, he started going to afternoon tea at Dru’s flat and began to fall in love with her:

“Druse, no offense, but I don’t think I’d like having rotten cream. Okay? How `bout just plain old whipp—“ Xander stopped and spun in horror at the soft snarl he heard emanating from Drusilla.

“I do NOT make rotten food!” She spat at him angrily. How dare he say such a thing to her? And she had thought they were friends. Ohhhhh! Things like that made her so angry.

Xander looked on in shock, his horror subsiding somewhat, as her face shifted back and forth from human to demon and back again. He came to realize, somewhat slowly, that she wasn’t going all evil and homicidal on him. She was angry… angry and hurt. He felt a slow burn of shame wash all over him. He’d hurt her feelings. Ever since he knew her, he was always amazed at how sensitive she was. How easily she was hurt.

She was really cute, and such a welcome contrast to the lousy real-life attitudes I’d seen. As a socially-inept Asperger, I also find stories of relationships fascinating and don’t mind admitting I’m a sucker for romantic comedies and a sentimental bag of mush at heart.

And there was something indefinably sweet about Drusilla. Something only Xander brought out. So it was a natural progression – I went from reading one utterly specific type of fan-fiction (tales of Dru and Xander) and essentially schooling myself in that precise area of the genre – to writing one myself.

Incidentally, it’s funny you should call it an unlikely relationship. Even I sometimes called them the odd couple, but there were similarities if you looked very carefully…


Indeed. I thought about it a little more, and lets face it, Xander always had a thing for the monster gals. What prompt you to send Drusilla's Roses, to Juliet Landau?

Well, I finished Roses, Drusilla was alive and very comfortably ensconced in my mind (and when I wished to see her, gliding shyly around my flat), I couldn’t really publish anywhere except on Meltha’s website and although I was well-balanced and well-aware Dru was fictional, I was nevertheless deeply attached to my vampire flatmate and didn’t want to file such a lovely and lively girl away on a bookshelf to be forgotten.

So what to do?

In Leonard Nimoy’s second autobiographical work, I Am Spock, he made the clear point that:

“…the actor is ultimately the ‘keeper of the flame’ for his or her character.”

So, logically, the best thing to do for Dru was put her in the care of her keeper by sending Roses to Juliet Landau in Hollywood. It would also serve the parallel purpose of getting Dru (very reluctantly) out of my system, and I would then be able to resume a “normal” life without my flatmate.

It was a fairly straightforward decision, arrived at neither callously or carelessly, but as Burns would say, “the best-laid schemes o’ mice an’ men gang oft agley!”


What is it that made you believe there was something inside the character of Drusilla that was in any way redeemable?

There is the moment at the end of Crush (Buffy season five) where Dru is physically dumped by Spike. The look of shock, upset and loss on her face definitely got to me in a big way at the time. It could be argued that Drusilla might have been in a very fragile state by the time of Crush as she had nearly been incinerated by Angel in L.A. shortly before, was holding herself together by main force and desperately in need of her William’s support. When Spike brutally rejected her, that could have been the last straw for Dru, setting up the backstory which led to Roses:

But not this one. Her head was clear as a bell for the first time in decades. She could not hear the stars and Miss Edith was long gone, lost in one of the slimy nests she had drifted through over the past two years. Heartbroken about losing her William to the slayer and lost without her vampire family’s protection, she had gone from prized jewel to pariah. She had been used, abused and shunned by her vampire kin because she was “a f*****g pain-in-the-ass loony,” or so a young fledgling had yelled at her.(Drusilla’s Roses)
I’d say one of the most important facets of understanding Dru is that there are subtleties to her nature. Things you don’t notice at first glance, hence the pivotal quote from Dear Miss Landau to which I referred in my answer to question five.

Now, the other episode which led to a certain little eureka moment is one I’d like to keep under wraps. That is the episode which inspired Drusilla Revenant’s twist. My creative process is like a pretty straightforward software programme. Every so often, an idea clunks out like a video-cassette being ejected from an old VCR. While I’m occupied with that idea I’m relatively blind to other possibilities, which I suppose are shunted off to some part of my subconscious until my id decides the next idea should emerge.

Anyway, I’d just completed the sequel to Roses, Drusilla’s Redemption, and was watching a certain Buffy or Angel episode when I saw something I had not seen before. Out clunked the next idea. I emailed Miss Landau, basically saying I’d spotted something and that was the genesis of Revenant. Interestingly, as I went to great trouble to make the trilogy adhere to Buffyverse canon, Revenant had to be wrapped round Drusilla’s adventures in Angel 24-25.

When I met Miss Landau in L.A., I admitted that this would probably cause me some problems, but it all worked out pretty well and both versions of Drusilla (mine and the official one) were quite seamlessly merged. Unfortunately, I have no influence whatsoever over the further development of canon. Giles lived on in Revenant but shortly after I finished it, he was killed in Buffy season eight. I hope Angel manages to resurrect him…

Finally, it’s very important to note that people with autism are generally not that empathic, so for Drusilla to elicit such a reaction from me meant there simply had to be something special about her.
Both of her.


What was it like to meet the exquisite, Juliet Landau, after so much dedication to her character on Buffy, and respect for she was in reality?

That day – 14th March 2010 – really should be part of Buffy mythology, too. In the film version of 84 Charing Cross Road, Helene Hanff says:

“The reader would not credit that such things could be, but I was there and I saw it.”

If you were looking for a musical backdrop, it would probably be the late Israel Kamakawiwo’ole’s cover version of Over The Rainbow, and if I told you that thinking of it can still break me down in tears, then I would not be lying nor even exaggerating. I stole the Enterprise for my Helen of Troy all right, and she was worth every moment of it.

Lately, I’ve even been allowing myself to say:

You’ll never see anything like it again in your life.

And you probably won’t. The meshing of the myriad factors which brought me to Sunset that day: the specific nature of Drusilla’s character, the neurological damage I suffered which made me think more deeply about Dru than I otherwise would have, my strange ability to empathise with and write Dru, my decision to send Roses to Hollywood, Miss Landau’s decision to reply, our email/twitter correspondence, my ability to travel independently despite being autistic and then to write the tale of the trip…

No, it really was like Rain Man meets Notting Hill via 84 Charing Cross Road. It all really happened and it’ll probably be a long time before you’ll see its’ like again.

I could wax lyrical like this forever, and there’s a real danger I could end up boring the pants off everybody like Jody’s grandfather did in Steinbeck’s The Red Pony, but luckily there is a contemporary description of it. I arrived an hour early at the rendezvous point on Sunset Boulevard, and while I waited I did some writing.
This is what it was like that Sunday morning in March, on a boulevard west of Sunset:

They say all America looks for that sunlit city on the hill, where the sidewalk ends and the good life begins.

Perhaps there’s a hint of Mom’s apple pie in the air, malted milkshakes at the diner, the scent of coffee always on the brew; and that most delicate and fragile of things, the tinge of lost innocence in the air. Like seeing your first love as she was, before disappointment and disillusion changed her.

For some, Sunset Boulevard signals the end of dreams. It’s the last stop of the trolley car, the red light at the intersection, the look on the doctor’s face when he has to deliver terminal news.

And then again, sometimes not.

The message was thankfully clear. The hopeful trust I’d carried for a year, across an ocean and over 3,000 miles of hard road, was about to be fulfilled.

A small thing was going to happen. Of no interest to most, of curiosity to some, perhaps a subject of speculation to others.

From somewhere I smell the scent of roses, and I think I hear Drusilla singing softly in the distance.

The bus drops me off at the end of Sunset. I look up and see, not the house on Candlewood Drive, but the homes way up in the Hollywood Hills, well lit by the sun. I find myself smiling.

I wait for a while. I no longer feel tired or weary. Those aches and pains are the province of other, older men; and I am young again, as I was before.

I see a face in the crowd, coming closer. It is familiar.

Oh dear Miss Landau, it is so good to see you!

James Christie

17th March 2010


To say your trip to America to meet Juliet changed your life, is the understatement of the century. Why don't you share with us how it impacted you?

Gee, where do I start? I went from being an underachieving neuro-typical to a high-achieving Asperger (very sadly, only about 15% of us have any sort of job), I escaped from Thoreau’s life of quiet desperation and fulfilled my dreams, and I even recaptured my youth and went out again like a captain regaining his command. I am very grateful for the help I have received from Miss Landau, from the NAS, from my long-suffering mother, and from the fine and decent friends I later met at the organisation; but as I was thinking about how to answer this question, a seemingly small but important point occurred to me.

Myself and my dear Miss Landau have now been corresponding for two-and-a-half years. There have been occasional ups and downs, but Jim of the NAS once asked me if the whole situation was stressful and difficult for me, and I replied that, at the heart of things, she always made me happy, and I wasn’t really happy before.

I’m off work with ‘flu at the moment. The other night the full moon was out, looking a bit like it did in John Patrick Shanley’s Moonstruck (coincidentally, Miss Landau is starring in Shanley’s earlier play, Danny and the Deep Blue Sea, at the moment), so I took a picture of the moon from the stairwell, sent my dear Miss Landau the shot and we flipped a few emails about it back and forth.

It was no big thing. Just a little footnote in life’s long parade, but I spent the rest of the evening in a sublimely good mood. It had been fun, I was happy, and it didn’t really have anything to do with Buffy or with autism.


Do hope you wish to talk to Joss Whedon about your Drusilla series?

Believe it or not, I hadn’t really thought about that until now. When I first sent Roses across the pond, I schooled myself to assume nothing would happen but at the same time could not help but wonder if it would make it into Joss Whedon’s hands. However, once Miss Landau and I started to correspond, I forgot about all that. A friend teased me sometime later, asking if I’d be emailing Jennifer Lopez or Nicole Kidman next.
I simply said:

“I have my Hollywood star, and I want no other.”

And that’s the way it was and is. However, at the time I had no idea one Drusilla would turn into three (with a fourth on the way), that I would cross America on a Greyhound bus, or that Dear Miss Landau would be published.

I have therefore already fulfilled my own core ambitions but I don’t necessarily have to stop at that. I have a great deal of respect for Joss Whedon, would be very pleased and honoured to meet him and (amongst other things) to show him Drusilla Revenant and discuss the twist.

Mr Whedon and I are virtually the same age, I think we may have a similar sense of humour and I believe any such meeting would be productive and enjoyable. Neither he nor I have anything to lose and possibly quite a lot to gain. He is of course very busy with The Avengers, but I’ve taken the whole month of March off for the launch of Dear Miss Landau and, with not much notice, could therefore make it over to L.A. for a couple of days if required.


Tell us about your hard work trying create awareness of your books.

Myself and Chaplin Books are trying to create that buzz right now. Grateful thanks must also go to Deverill Weekes for opening several doors. I myself have been blogging on SlayAlive’s and smgfan.com’s fan forums for some time. There’s also a YouTube clip of me reading an extract from Dear Miss Landau out there with two more to come.

I’m not sure how you write a sequel to a true-life novel, but my publisher, Amanda Field, will be lecturing at UCLA at the end of August. I mentioned to her that I didn’t necessarily want to be a one-hit wonder, and that (depending on how well Dear Miss Landau sells in March) one sure way of getting more prose out of me is to put me on the road again with Juliet the Notebook in August, point me in the general direction of California (hopefully Juliet the Landau will be there at the time) and stuff will happen. There could even be a US launch of Dear Miss Landau in California.

Also, the articles written during the original trip were heavily concerned with the state of the nation through which I was travelling. It wasn’t all about Buffy although it was, in the end, all for Miss Landau. That, though, was 2010. 2012 is, I understand, an election year and quite possibly a historically pivotal year for America. Is the US now a superpower in terminal decline or will another Roosevelt ease Washington’s gridlocked politics and reconstruct the American Dream?

It will certainly not be easy. As I understand it, the US is dealing with a new depression in the south-west, a flow of power from West to East, falling house prices and foreclosures, a gargantuan national debt, a reduced national credit rating and a real unemployment rate of ca. 20%. These are undoubtedly hard times and there seem to be too few chroniclers of it. John Steinbeck partly inspired both Drusilla’s Roses and Dear Miss Landau. While I would never compare myself to that great man, I can write of what I see, so long as my muse is with me.

A man’s also got to know his limitations, as Clint Eastwood might say, and I know it’s only Drusilla with whom I have this incredible literary connection. While I am very fond of other Buffy characters like Darla, Cordelia and Spike, I might not be able to do them justice.

You might even say I can only do it with my dear old Dru!
Funnily enough, every time I finish a Drusilla story my creative VCR (as mentioned in the answer to question eight) simply coughs up the next chapter, so guess what happened? I’d finished Drusilla Revenant, finished the trilogy and ended it well.

One week later, I could see the continuation.

Trying to be rational (really, why do I bother?), I told myself I would probably have “just enough left” to do one more Dru story before retiring her for good.

Boy, was I wrong there.

As soon as I started Drusilla’s Song (provisional title), my dear old Dru bounced brightly back to life and we were off! I also got Meltha back. So Miss Landau has her dream team available if she wants us, and I’ve sent Spike and Dru back into action again. I’m dropping them into Afghanistan this time and, as usual, probably to certain death. I tend to think any plot can be improved with the addition of some gratuitous sex and violence, and Spike has been putting the boot into Dru with a certain sadistic relish for which Xander just wasn’t designed.

But there’s a strong emotional core there, too, working off Revenant’s twist with a touch of elegy and a hint of The Last Picture Show…

The fourth part of the trilogy, as Douglas Adams might say.

I always try to stress the importance of drafting and editing in writing, but when I’m writing Dru I just sit down, see the story and stuff happens, and it’s great. So I’d beg everyone, whatever they do, not to question this strange ability of mine too closely or I really might lose it, and I really don’t want that to happen.


It has been my honor to have you here, James.


BUY DEAR MISS LANDAU HERE!!!

Summary of DEAR MISS LANDAU

Every morning James Christie puts on a blue rugby shirt and jeans. His wardrobe is full of identical outfits. Every day he eats the same meal and drinks from the same mug. These are not ingrained habits, but survival strategies. For James, coping with new experiences feels like smashing his head through a plate glass window. The only relief comes from belting the heavy bag at the boxing club or watching Buffy the Vampire Slayer.

He’s an autistic man lost in a neuro-typical world. Differently wired. Alien. Despite a high IQ, it seems he’ll spend the next 20 years cleaning toilets. But then his life takes an amazing turn – from a Glasgow tenement to a rendezvous with a Hollywood star on Sunset Boulevard. On that road trip across America, the man who feels he lacks a soul will find it. Eight time zones and 5,000 miles away, he has a date with the actress who played Drusilla, the kooky vampire who changed his life when he saw her in a Buffy episode. Drusilla has no soul either. And maybe that’s the attraction. But Drusilla is fictional. The lady he’ll see on Sunset is Juliet Landau. She’s real, and that’s a very different proposition...