The Return of Author James Christie

My good friend, and brilliant scribe, James Christie is back again (READ HERE FOR HIS LAST INTERVIEW) on The Eldon Blog. Author at Huffington Post (UK), and of the book, DEAR MISS LANDAU. Though this interview is reposted, information for the original author of the post can be found HERE.

1) Will you be sending a blog every week?

It depends on how much spare brainpower I have. As (hopefully) explained in Dear Miss Landau (DML), my major autistic disability is a massive deficit in information-processing ability. In brief, it’s as if a modern computer was powered by a twenty-year-old processor, so I have to nurse this faulty part along quite gently. If I get too tired, I can’t write. In fact, I can’t even think or speak all that well. Thankfully, my old brain has a form of back-up hardware which keeps me going, which is how I managed first time in Vegas after I’d been on a Greyhound bus for twelve hours. This is explained in more detail in chapter 37 of DML.

Luckily– in some ways, anyway - I am an unpaid external contractor, so within reason I can blog whenever I like.

2) How did you get the job?

Since Dear Miss Landau was published in March, Chaplin Books and myself have been exploring every single marketing possibility we can think of. In this case, Amanda Field (managing director of Chaplin) noticed the UK version of the Huffington Posthad bloggers writing for it and asked them if they wanted a real-life Asperger blogging for them. They said “cool,” I supplied a couple of possible blogs, the deal was done and that was that.

Or perhaps there was a bit more to it than that. If life is a race towards redemption and Allah really does weave men’s destinies into many strange tapestries (a quote at the start of DML), perhaps another strand really was woven into the tapestry of my life. I had a short and inglorious period as a journalism trainee at a ghastly newspaper twenty-two years ago. I did not then know I was autistic and their idea of training was to put trainees under tremendous stress and try to make us do six things at once while also attending lectures in the badly mistaken assumption that this would make us “thrive” under pressure. For an Asperger, this was living hell. Ironically, I was the one they’d been counting on to come up with ideas, but their approach lost them all the potential they might have reaped, turned me against them for life and completely destroyed my self-esteem.

It was a very, very long, hard road back. I kept quiet about what had happened because whining about it would have sounded like the worst case of sour grapes in the world. The only way to redeem myself was, I felt, legitimately to make it into print. Specifically, I wanted to see the words--The moral right of James Christie to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act of 1988--on the flyleaf of my book. One simple sentence, but the hardest thing in the world to do. Nor would I accept a compromise. The possibility of vanity publishing was always out there and self-publishing via Amazon is becoming easier and easier. When neuro-typicals started talking about such options, I just said no. I did wonder if I was being a bit black and white about it, but in the end the gold seal of authenticity can only be awarded when a professional publisher accepts your work on merit.

I am naturally eternally grateful to Amanda Field for doing so, but in some ways publication of Dear Miss Landau was the end of a long road, not its beginning.

Nevertheless, events did continue to take place, so I was quite pleased also to become a sort of feature article writer for the Huffington Post (UK), which was what I’d originally perceived myself to be when I was writing on the road in Australia. One does wonder what might have been if I’d been properly supported in the first place, though. Both the newspaper that nearly wrecked me and many other organisations go on and on about getting “passionate and talented”people and then seem hellbent on beating that very talent out of them...

Maybe that will work in some cases, but perhaps the fact that I proved I really had talent by coming back from a personal pit of hell and pulling off the near-impossible means these organisations don’t always know as much as they think they do.

3) Are you given an assigned subject, or do you decide what to write about?

Basically the latter. The Huffington Post’s advice is that “the first thought is usually the best thought,”but although I am defined as a blogger that doesn’t mean I will then dash off a biased article without thinking. I’d say it is vital to have some idea of media law, to be able to verify my sources and/or to be willing to swear on oath that I was an eyewitness to an event depicted. If necessary, I would even consult a lawyer. In fact, I did all of these things when I wrote my second blog, and knew perfectly well that it still might not get past the UK blog team. Blogging may sound totally new and cutting-edge, but the same old rules of journalism still apply.

4) It’s been a while since Dear Miss Landau was published. How well has it sold, and are you satisfied with the response the book has been getting?

Well, my publisher once said to me that most first-time novelists sell an average of 15 copies. Dear Miss Landau is now pushing 2,000 and except for one lady who couldn’t stand it, has had superlative reviews. As I had to beat tremendous odds just to be published, and as the prospect of a second printing was a far-distant dream on the horizon not too long ago, I am pretty satisfied, but I do feel there are further dreams which should become reality...

5) What about the readers? What have they said about it?

Tim Coates said on Radio 4’s A Good Read that Dear Miss Landau was:

“the best book I’ve read for ten years.”

And this was combined with presenter Harriett Gilbert’s highly perceptive comment that seeing the world through my eyes was “really riveting.”This was because she felt that, unlike books such as The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time, my autism was the real thing, not merely a novelist’s ‘device’- and unlike many memoirs which purported to be accurate but turn out not to be so - “what you’re getting with Dear MissLandau is the truth.”

I considered the “device” comment very complimentary, and based on that wonder if Dear Miss Landau is the first true autistic adventure story ever written?

I’m not sure. Seven Pillars of Wisdommight have a prior claim, although Lawrence of Arabia was never formally diagnosed with Aspergers…

Another reviewer on Goodreads.com said that:

I read this constantly thinking “is this for real?” An autistic Scottish man in his 40s has an obsession with a character from Buffy the Vampire Slayer and writes a 250,000 word novel based on the character and ends up travelling to Hollywood and meeting the actress who plays her. You couldn’t make it up.

I think that review sums up the whole thing rather well. If the tale of Dear Miss Landau had been a fictional screenplay set for a Hollywood pitch, it might have seemed over-plotted and unrealistic, but it all really happened and proves, I suppose, that truth sometimes really is stranger than fiction.

I wasn’t sure how I’d react to a bad review, but in the event it didn’t bother me at all. In some ways the book others read is for me only a reflection of the life I lived, and I can say with authority that it described and recounted real events very closely. Plot holes weren’t plot holes – they were things I genuinely got wrong or forgot to do! And if one day scholars of literature could travel back in time and observe events as they actually unfolded, then they really would (metaphorically speaking) see a lanky bloke stealing the Enterprise for his Helen of Troy that first day in March 2010. They could sit at another table in that Starbucks Drive-Thru in Barstow on the 12th, watch me make contact on Juliet the Notebook while coming in on a wing and a prayer, or wait a little way from me on Sunset Boulevard, where I met my dear Miss Landau one Sunday morning not so long ago.

6) Is blogging tougher than writing a book?

In all honesty, it’s probably a bit easier. To gain the ability to write Dear Miss Landau, I had to practice for two decades, get myself traumatized at work, go through a near-nervous breakdown, rebuild myself and send myself across the world to a once-in-a-lifetime meeting on Sunset Boulevard.

In the case of blogging, all I have to do is utilize some of that ability to write about five hundred words about what’s pissing me off that week. Without deadlines to worry about, I’m not under excessive pressure, so it’s not too stressful.

I’ve also had five or six years blogging experience thrashing my former“profession” of librarianship on Tim Coates’ Good Library Blog. Tim, I’d better explain, is the former CEO of the UK bookstores/retailers WH Smith and Waterstones, a library campaigner, and founder of the e-book store Bilbary. I am also writing my own thread entitled Dear Miss Landau on SlayAlive’s fan website.

7) Are you hoping to write another book, and if so, any ideas on what it could be about?

That may be the million-dollar question, and for the answer – to really give an answer worthy of the question and which might unlock a few of the mysteries around Dear Miss Landau (like how in God’s name it came to be at all!) - it’s best to go back to that moment on the train travelling up the West Highland Railway when I first started writing Drusilla’s Roses, the predecessor and companion to Dear Miss Landau:

I did not then hear Drusilla’s song, but perhaps she sang to both of us in those early days. First to Juliet Landau, who had just begun to write a two-part Drusilla story for IDW Publishing’s Angelcomic book series, and then to me.

Miss Landau later said she was “drawn into Dru’s rich, dark world”,and so was I. In fact, I was positively yanked. The 08.12 to Mallaig, sitting at one end of the West Highland Railway in Glasgow’s Queen Street Station, might have seemed a long way from Los Angeles, but both places saw Drusilla’s rebirth and both were as real as real could be.

It was January 31 2009. I was going up to the West Highland town of Glenfinnan for the annual general meeting of the Friends of Glenfinnan Station Museum. For no particularly well-thought-out reason, I’d bought a green Pukka Pad jotter with me to make notes and perhaps to do some writing...

I opened the jotter, put pen to paper, and Dru grabbed me by the throat.

I’ve known bad writers and worse film-makers who reach for a cliché at every turn, but real life can often put fiction to shame. If I must label my experience a thunderclap high above the hills which let vitality and creativity run like fire through my veins, if I must say my pen began to shoot across the page as if it had a mind of its own, that I completely ignored the views of Loch Long, Ben Lomond and Rannoch Moor, nearly forgot to get off the train at Glenfinnan and wandered through the meeting half-aware, thinking only of getting back on the train to Glasgow afterwards and writing some more, then that is what I shall do, and without apology, for that is what really happened that day. I began to move away from the drab and vicious life I had known, to open the door into what would become a glimpse of heaven at Sunset.

And if that is cliché, I only wish I could live every day of my life that way.

(Dear Miss Landau, chapter 14)
 

This is one reason why Dear Miss Landau might sound a bit over-dramatic if pitched to a Hollywood player, but that’s the way it happened, and right from the start it felt less like I’d planned anything out and far more as if I’d gone on a:

...complete creative bender. I wrote, I would say, not astory about Dru, but thestory 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...

... 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.

(Chaplin interview, March 2012)
 

Then, of course, it got even stranger. I titled the original story Drusilla’s Roses without the slightest idea Rose was Juliet’s middle name, was amazed to be contacted by Juliet after I’d sent her the tale, took the trip across the US to meet her, and on the way across something strange happened just outside Somerset, Pennsylvania:

I also remember something else, way up in the Alleghenies on the Interstate, thinking, musing and looking back down a long valley spruced up with pines. Seeing a great white church in the distance, boxy and stark.

To pass the long hours, travellers sometimes fall into a contemplative state. The mind seems to empty and truths become apparent. I don’t know how it works.

All I do know is that a single thought came to me, and though I am loath to believe in fate, I cannot forget its words:

I’m going to my destiny.

(Dear Miss Landau, chapter 34)
 

At the time, I said nothing of this to Juliet. I was extremely sensitive about any accusation of stalking, and back then there was no Chaplin Books, no Dear Miss Landau, and no sequels to Roses. Juliet and I hadn’t even met, and there was no guarantee we would.

A subconscious voice telling me straight-up that I was going to my destiny therefore sounded more than a little presumptuous and quite odd, so I shut up about it.

But those little questions of why I was there and how well-fitted I actually was for the role I seemed to be fulfilling kept surfacing. Several months after the first trip, I sent a writer’s commentary on Rosesto Juliet, and at one point said:

Analogy that lately occurred to me: A bit macho and clichéd to an outside observer but very real to me. The advice Rocky got from his trainer before he went out for the 15th round against Ivan Drago in Rocky IV:

“All your power! All your strength! Everything you’ve got! Punch until you can’t punch no more! This is your whole life here! Now go out there and do it!”

I’ve heard Joss considers a life a fight [shown at the end of Angel], and I can’t dispute his philosophy much. Maybe that’s why I got the job of writing Roses. It needed someone willing to give everything they had, and that’s certainly what happened, although it wasn’t exactly a fight. Dru wasn’t my opponent. She was quiet, placid and supportive. I liked having her around.

On a purely scientific basis, I was also in the right place at the right time. I read a fascinating article in New Scientist in 2006 which basically made the point that, in addition to talent, it takes 15-20 years practise to develop extraordinary mastery of a subject. Well, I’d done my time, and when Drusilla grabbed me, I was more ready than I knew. I kept the article, by the way, and could scan and send it to you if you were interested.

What else? I’ve tried to answer every question you asked in March to the best of my ability, but even I sometimes struggle for an explanation. I’m professionally loath to just place everything at the doorstep of fate and destiny, but I personally rather like the idea and, as Sherlock Holmes once said: “take away the impossible and whatever is left, however improbable, must be the truth.” I can’t escape the improbably logical conclusion that I was meant to do this and am fulfilling my allotted role. Well, best just to keep my feet firmly on the ground and go out there and do it. Dru IV is gelling nicely in my head and I’m looking forward to starting it, even if this may be Dru’s last dance.

But then again, who knows?

(Drusilla’s Roses, writer’s commentary, 2010)

So it really did seem (as mentioned in Dear Miss Landau’s foreword) as if Allah the Merciful, the Compassionate was, quite literally, weaving the threads of my destiny into a very strange tapestry. By now I’d successfully completed the first trip across America and met Juliet Landau on Sunset Boulevard, Drusilla’s Redemption had been delivered to her about two weeks before I set out that first day in March, and in conversation in Hollywood I’d explained my intent to write a second sequel – Drusilla Revenant– the story of which would be wrapped around Juliet’s own tale of Drusilla in Angel 24-25.

I’m really not sure if that has ever been done before. The unofficial tale wrapped around the official tale with the keeper of the flame’s knowledge… Drusilla’s Roseshad ended like a classic love story, with Xander taking his newly-ensouled lady back to the house on Candlewood Drive. Drusilla’s Redemption managed to capture lightning in a bottle and take the story on, developing Drusilla’s personal history, forcing her to mature and cope with a relationship and sending her to Africa to (indirectly) fight for her soul much as Spike had done. Redemption also tied up vampire creation myth (Cain and Lilith) with early Buffyverse history (the Old Ones, the Shadowmen and the first Slayer) and located it in the Great Rift Valley – essentially tying up loose plot strands from Buffyverse canon and relating it to Dru’s personal journey:

Drusilla sat up straight with the good posture of the well-bred Victorian girl, clasped her hands demurely and began to recite.

“First there were the Old Ones, demons of power and thunder who made this earth a hell of fire and sulphur for aeons without end. Then they faded away from this transitory plane like mist on a February morn, and out of Africa came mortal Man.”

“Which part of Africa?”asked Xander suspiciously.

Drusilla cocked her head towards the ceiling, as if listening to the stars.

“From the abyss. The rift. The great valley of the ancients, so Solomon says.”

“The Great Rift Valley, you mean?” said the sister, fascinated.

“Where’s that?” asked Xander, wishing he’d paid more attention in history class.

“About six hundred miles east of here,” the sister replied.

“Before he ascended,” Dru intoned, “the last pure demon fed upon a woman called Lilith who dwelt in the Rift Valley. He possessed her, infecting her human body with the essence of a demon.”

“So this Lilith became the first vampire?” said Xander.

Drusilla smiled brightly. “Yes, dear. You might say I am a daughter of Lilith.”

“There is mention of a Lilith in the Dead Sea Scrolls and the Talmud,” the sister mused, “and the Kabbalah says Lilith’s soul was lodged in the depths of a great abyss. The abyss could have been the Great Rift Valley. It’s also said that Lilith was created to be Adam’s first wife, but she ran away. After he slew Abel, Adam’s son Cain found her and lived with her in a land to the east of Eden”

“Lilith dwelt with Cain in the Rift Valley, east of this Eden,” Dru said in agreement. “Together they sired a race of vampires. Half-breed demons. Pariahs. Welcome in neither the house of the human nor the demon,” she finished glumly.

Xander’s head was spinning. Adam’s first wife had been turned, set up home with his son in Africa and created a vampire race who wandered about like a bunch of stateless refugees?

He kept his mouth tightly shut, but felt a certain blasphemous relief that at least he and Dru weren’t the first human and vampire to try living together. In fact, Cain and Lilith set a pretty big precedent.

Drusilla’s eyes swivelled towards his and he realised she’d read his mind. She gave him a quick, private smile and went on.

“Pockets of the Old Ones’ demonic power still lingered in and around the Rift Valley. So sorcerors called Shadowmen chained a girl up in a cave near the Rift, infused her with the Old Ones’power in order to fight the vampires, and created the first slayer.”

“I get it,” said Xander. “And this particular pocket – the well of the slayers’ power - isn’t just in Africa. It’s right next door to us in Africa.”

“Yes,” said Drusilla, sanely and soberly. “And it’s very easily affronted. First, it was angered by the spell the Scoobies cast to defeat Adam. Then it was infuriated by the activation of all the potential slayers. Now, the presence of this slayer and of one of the Scoobies who originally angered it has roused it to white-hot fury. It won’t show any mercy. Not to the slayer. Not to the children. And not to us.”

“You have come right back to your beginnings,” the sister said quietly to Drusilla. “To your garden of Eden. And this is where it ends.”

(Drusilla’s Redemption, 2010)

Out on Catalina in March 2010 I researched locations for Drusilla Revenant and started work on it a few weeks after I got back.

As stated on the last page of Dear Miss Landau, Revenant contains the possible conclusion to the unfinished story arc I believe I saw in a Buffyepisode a week after I finished Redemption. The word revenant itself means “one returned from the dead or from exile” and this fitted the story so perfectly it wasn’t true.

And the odd thing is, I don’t know where I got the word from. I was originally going to rather reluctantly call it Drusilla Returns, but then this eight-letter conundrum just waltzed out of the back of my mind. The right word, in the right place, at the right time…

So perhaps that’s how the incredible story reached, if nothing else, the end of the beginning. Because, to toy with cliché, the story didn’t end with the last page of Dear Miss Landau, it went on, both in real-life and in fiction. Juliet and I continued to correspond. I wrote Revenant, finding it surprisingly easy to merge the two storylines and the official and unofficial Drusillas. I even gave her sisters names, but when I finished RevenantI did not release it to any fan-fiction websites.

There was a chance the now complete Drusilla trilogy could be published, but it wouldn’t be a very good idea to expect a publisher to try and sell copies for cash if I’d already given away the remaining text for free, so Drusilla Revenant– complete with the dramatic twist which could turn the Buffyverse upside down – is still sitting on my bookshelf like the Lost Ark of Buffy’s Covenant and I truly wish the fans would mount a campaign for its release, for I’d truly love to turn it over to them…

Once Revenant was finished, I went straight into the first draft of Dear Miss Landau, but this was not with the confidence of a writer secure in the knowledge that his signed and sealed publishing contract was safely filed. One autism-friendly publisher the NAS thought was a sure thing had (as is often the case) said it wasn’t quite right for them, so it was a choice between hawking my wares round the few publishers who would even look at an unsolicited manuscript from an untried author without an agent, or just writing the thing before I forgot too much of the trip to be able to. I decided to do the latter as I’d have no wares to hawk if I didn’t.

So that’s how Dear Miss Landau began, as a draft written in hopelessness in an old stone house deep down amidst the Scottish Borders, only a few months after I’d stolen the Enterprisefor my Helen of Troy. The ship be calmed once again in a deathless Sargasso Sea and foolish hope being quietly beaten to death, but the hands refusing to accept the inevitable or impossible, forging the words honed from a lifetime of experience and refusing to knuckle under to realism.

The winter of my dreams set in but the pages started to pile up all the same. In a literary sense I was on another journey, but in this case I thought I was facing the absolute certainty of failure. There was no lady ahead for me this time and no harbour for the ship.

Forty-six years old. No track record, no agent and no contacts.

Hopeless.

Do it anyway.

I remember finishing the first draft early in 2011. It hadn’t been that difficult a job. I’d been able to paste in several of the blogs from the actual trip and selected a few emails which could (with Juliet’s permission) be used. I think it was about 1.00 a.m. one Saturday morning.

Now, remember Tim Coates’ Good Library Blog which I’d used to merrily thrash my former “profession” for six years? We’d just got broadband at Roberton, so I turned on Juliet the Notebook and put one simple, fateful message onto the Blog:

Anyone know a publisher?

That was all. Nothing else.

I spent the weekend in unutterable depression, quite sure that was the end. That, to paraphrase Bridget Jones, I’d die a sad lonely old man talking to his own colostomy bag and be found three weeks later half-eaten by Alsations. The manuscript would then be found and I’d be a posthumous success…

Apart from the bit about the Alsations, that is an accurate description of that long weekend, and of the next thirty or forty years as I expected to live them.

On Monday morning, I got an expression of verbal interest from Chaplin Books.

Amanda Field, managing editor of Chaplin, had been a fellow blogger, and she’d been reading me the whole time.

If that doesn’t seem incredible enough (and Chris, the owner of Biggar’s local bookshop, Atkinson-Pryce, later agreed the odds against publication were about five million to one), the date I received the expression of interest was 14thMarch, 2011.

A year to the day since I’d met Miss Landau on Sunset Boulevard.

I think I sent her an email that day, metaphorically throwing up my hands and saying I believed in fate and destiny…

Well, the verbal interest was confirmed in writing, five test chapters were accepted, Dear Miss Landau was quietly written in a Glasgow flat and a small town in the Scottish borderlands over the next few months while all the public hue and cry followed Whit Anderson’s doomed attempt to reboot Buffy. Whit’s script crashed and burned while Dear Miss Landau, which I’d originally conceived as a screenplay, was published to rave reviews in March 2012 (almost exactly fifteen years to the day after Buffy first aired) and there’s been a long struggle since then to get media attention and publicity.

At present, there is the possibility of an audiobook version of Dear Miss Landau, but that, I think, is not the full picture:

It was highly unlikely that a person with autism could gain enough empathy to write Drusilla accurately, but somehow I did.

It was, as John Plowman mentioned on A Good Read, extremely difficult even for someone with connections to contact a Hollywood celebrity. I succeeded in doing so without connections, and with a one-time only long shot (the text of Drusilla’s Roses and a covering letter addressed to a certain Dear Miss Landau) which I never expected to hear of again.

It was extremely unlikely that Juliet Landau and I would enter into an online correspondence, but we did.

It was very unlikely that a person with autism would find it within himself to cross a continent for his film star, but I did.

As stated, the odds against an untried, traumatised, autistic, forty-six year old writer without an agent being published were astronomical, but it happened.

There have been other coincidences.

Overall, and although I’m neither gambler nor statistician, I’d say the odds against all of this happening were so high that chance cannot fully explain it.

Perhaps that thought I had in Somerset, Pennsylvania, was right all along.

In my opinion, then, the full tapestry (and possible future history) of events is still to unfold. It’s been perfectly clear in my mind for two or three years. I respect Miss Landau’s right to choose which path through life she wishes to take, and Amanda Field has been understandably preoccupied with publishing and promoting Dear Miss Landau, so funnily enough I guess that leaves me as the only person with a full working knowledge of what I’ll christen this tripartite path I appear to have been yanked onto.

So here’s the truest answer I can give to question seven:

a) Dear Miss Landau, with its melding of fiction and reality, was published in March 2012. I originally conceived the idea as a screenplay while walking down the hill from Candlewood Drive, and it can easily be turned into one.

b) The next book should be the Drusilla trilogy – Roses, Redemption and Revenant. The three novellas which would make up this book would give it a nice, neat length of about 100,000 words – and the novellas are already, written, proofed and edited! They’re all done! One signed set is sitting in my bookshelves in Glasgow, (I just got Drusilla Revenant signed at the Vampires Ball at Heathrow) and Revenant is waiting to be read. Chaplin and I are having trouble getting this to the attention of Simon Pulse (a division of Simon and Schuster) and we need help from the Buffy fanbase to do so.

c) Dear Miss Landau should be optioned as a film. During two trips across America, virtually everyone I met either had a friend or relative with autism, or knew of Buffy the Vampire Slayer– sometimes both. I’ve no doubt there is a large potential audience out there. The film version (with Juliet Landau’s permission) would differ quite a bit from the book and is probably the only possible means in existence today by which some of the original cast of Buffy could return (albeit briefly) to their roles… Again, Chaplin and I need help to achieve this.

Incidentally, I’m also working on a fourth Dru tale, recently renamed Spike and Dru: the Graveyard of Empires, which should (I sincerely hope) be the romantic tale of love and bullets which James Marsters apparently always hoped would reunite the deadly duo.

It is also intriguing to consider the fact that at the Vampires Ball this year, I described to James Marsters the way I gained a sudden connection with Drusilla in 2009 (Dear Miss Landau, chapter 14) and asked him how it compared with the acting chemistry which sprang up between himself and Juliet Landau when he was being cast.

Exactly the same, I understand.

So that’s it. One possible future for the Buffyverse is sitting on a bookshelf in Glasgow like the Lost Ark of the Covenant, just itching to be revealed. A unique book which would make a unique film is waiting to be noticed.

It will be a great pity if such potential never fully saw the light of day, but I should accept the cast and fans’ right to exercise their own free will.

On the other hand, I do have a theory about whyall this has happened.

As most fans will know, the 2009 Star Trek reboot featured a plot line wherein a bad guy from the 24th century came back in time and knocked the tapestry of Kirk and crew’s 23rd century destinies askew.

As Spock put it:

“Whatever our lives might have been, if the time continuum was disrupted, our destinies have changed.”

Being both an Asperger and a bit of a geek, I’m quite au fait with the concepts of Schrödinger’s Cat, possible futures and alternate timelines. Amazingly, there wasa pivotal moment in October 2009 where I found Juliet’s “lost”email and had to decide whether or not to answer it (Dear Miss Landau, chapter 25). If I had not done so, it is highly probable that the time line in which you, the reader, are now living and reading this article, would not exist.

There would probably have been no enduring correspondence between the Hollywood star and the Rain Man from Partick, no sequels to Rosesand no Dear Miss Landau. The two trips across America would never have taken place, Juliet Landau and I would not have met that day on Sunset Boulevard, the possible unfinished story arc would never have been spotted by me and so on.

This is what happened:

Late on a stygian Friday evening early in October, I took a look at my obsolete account.

I scrolled down through the 75 or so emails stagnating in the inbox, deleting some, not really concentrating on the job but still doing it with autistic precision.

Then I saw something.

An email from Juliet Landau, dated August 15 2009.

The 15th?

The 15th!

Two weeks before I’d emailed her!

With the care of a librarian handling the Book of Kells, I opened the email:

From:Juliet Landau Sent:15 August 2009 03:57 To:James Christie Subject:Your Story

Dear James

I just finished your story. I thought it was great. I really enjoyed it. You managed to catch Drusilla’s voice and behavior so beautifully. The sad, lost, haunted feeling of Dru was there. I myself have just written a comic about Dru as part of season 6 of“Angel.” Please check it out if you’d like.

I sat there for a full five minutes, deciding what to do.

Take the advice and hold back, or take a shot in the dark and reply?

Sometimes there are signs.

I felt a quite a lot like Marty McFly at the Enchantment Under The Seadancein the time-travel film Back to the Future Part II. He and I, both at a turning point between two alternate futures and not sure which road to take.

Reply. Something might happen.

Hold back. Nothing will happen.

In the end, I came to a simple decision.

Juliet Landau had been kind enough to email me. It would be impolite not to at least reply.

So, with the click of a mouse, I summoned the future…

(Dear Miss Landau, p. 94)

Boy, those guys in The Big Bang Theory would love this…

I even wrote an article on the subject in April 2012:

http://www.glasgowwestend.co.uk/showlog.php?weblogid=620contentid=13579

Why, then, has it turned out this way instead?

Well, to turn to Star Trek again, although Nero’s incursion altered the timeline, Kirk and his crew still had destinies they were meant to fulfil: Kirk to command the Enterprise, Spock to be science officer and so on; and despite the damage to the timeline it seemed as if they were all, by accident or design, slotting themselves back into their proper historical settings.

In the case of myself, Juliet Landau and Drusilla, the disruption – if indeed there even was one – was not quite that dramatic.

I mean, given the literary metaphors in Dear Miss Landau, I wouldn’t mind taking command of the Enterprise and fighting Nero to the death, but I don’t think that’s quite what’s required here.

It’s as if, a few years ago, something went wrong. Maybe not a big thing. An opportunity was missed, a story arc unfinished, a character and a person’s potential perhaps slightly overlooked. Even a small glitch can cause major alterations in a timeline. This is known as a ripple effect.

Something which should have happened, but didn’t. Events and destinies not unfolding quite the way they should have. This concept was most recently explored in the 2008 Doctor Who episode Turn Left where Donna Noble’s decision to turn right instead of left at a junction led to massive temporal changes and millions of deaths, including the Doctor…

Over the past three years, it has often seemed to me that the tripartite path detailed here is the one that should be taken. It has already enabled me to change my life and redeem myself by becoming a published author. It also, frankly, helped me regain my faith in women, which had taken quite a battering. I’ve had to take a highly conservative position regarding this up until recently, but I’m now as sure as I can be that this is the way to go and that there is more to be done.

It feels like somebody up there is trying to do a repair job, and it’s not finished yet.

To be clear but partisan about it, ever since Dear Miss Landau was published I’ve been able to say that if it all ended tomorrow, I would have nothing to complain about.

But I think fate, sometimes subtly, sometimes blatantly, has thrown us all a curve ball; and if we don’t run with it, don’t look for that sunlit city on the hill, we’ll regret it to our dying day.

James Christie

21st December 2012

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...