The time I was called out

Going to see Kiersten White is pretty much a sure thing.  Of course we had been hearing about Slayer for a while since we see her at MG so often. As always, we got to the store early and sort of ran amok.

Kiersten came out right after 7 and started talking about how she came to write Slayer and how she absolutely shouted “I’m the chosen one” when she found out.

They told me that they wanted a new Slayer. They said it could be a season 7 Slayer, but didn’t have to be. What I loved the most is that they took Buffy’s emotions were important. It changed the type of storyteller that I wanted to be. At first I was really excited and then I was like “oh no”. Buffy meant so much to me and others too. It showed the first lesbian couple on tv. It was so impactful for a lot of people.

{At some point, I’m not sure where, Kiersten asked the crowd if there was anyone who hadn’t watched the show.  I reluctantly raised my hand — but not even all the way up — and as she scanned the crowd, she stopped on me and exclaimed, “wait, stacee!?”  From there, she kept giving me pointed looks throughout her talk and if she talked about spoilers on the show, she said “it’s been 15 years, so that’s on you”  If you go to Mysterious Galaxy’s IG stories, you can actually see the part where she asks the crowd.}

I picked the watchers. Watchers never really got a big focus. I thought that was fascinating. It’s existed for a long period of time. Nina has been raised by watchers. It was fun to think it all through like how they would be buried.

What sort of research did you do?

My husband would come home and I would be laying on the couch and have graphic novels all over or would be re-watching episodes and I would be able to say that I was working. I went from historical and reading 1000 page texts to reading graphic novels. I had to get everything approved from Fox to make sure they were okay with it. There was only one thing they thought was too much.

The spine says “book 1”…

And the bags under my eyes say book 2. I just turned in book 2 on Sunday. It was really fun to write and there’s a cameo from a favorite side character.

How exciting was it to not have any sort of budget?

It was amazing.  They could get in the car and go places. There’s a lot of demons and I used a lot of theirs, but some others too. The downside is that you have to write a fight scene. And there’s hands everywhere and how many times is the word “hand” in the paragraph. Writing fight scenes and kissing scenes are exactly the same thing and they’re horrible.

Plans to reboot the show?

I learned about that at Comic-Con, like everyone else did. I’m not part of it and don’t know anything about it. This is just coming from me, I figure they’ll come in after season 7. They own all of this, so if they want to use Nina, they can. If they want another writer for the show…it might be the one thing that gets me to drive to LA.

I know people have a thing about reboots or reimaginings because they think it’ll ruin the original one. But it doesn’t ruin it because the original one still exists.

Favorite episode?

It’s like asking if I have a favorite child and I do. My favorite season is 3, but some of my favorite episodes are later. Of course, the standards like Hush and Once More with Feeling. I loved the finale for season 2. I loved Selfless because I love Anya.

What did you get to have the most fun with?

I got to create my own demons. At the end of season 8 of the graphic novels, Buffy has destroyed magic. The world has shifted and demons are stuck. I got to also create my own demonology and it was fun to make rules. I imposed order on a lawless universe.

Is there anything that was taken out?

This is not the only version of this book. I wrote this two other times. I wrote 4 novels in 2017 and two of them were this book. I wrote a really weird story. This is sort of embarrassing. There were triplets instead of twins. I was going to make it a twist that Nina was a Slayer and I held that reveal back for like 100 pages. And my editor is so nice and was like “this is called slayer, so it’s not really a surprise.”

Inspiration for Dark Descent and would you write a sequel?

My editor emailed me and told me that it was the 200 year of Frankenstein and they asked if I was interested. It’s my favorite classic novel, but I have a lot of issues with it. I zeroed in to Elizabeth almost instantly. It bothered me that the female characters existed for one thing. I wanted to explore why Elizabeth would come across that way and what was going on in her head.

I had 5 months to write it. I spent a month researching it and 3 months writing the wrong book. I wrote that version in about 6 days. I don’t think I would write another book. It’s not about plot, for me, it’s about if there’s intention for the character to go further. I don’t think Elizabeth would go further.

What is your favorite part of the first season?

The humor. The dialogue is so good. The first episode has to give so much information because Buffy already knows she’s a Slayer.

There was another question, but I didn’t get it down.  The signing started and we got lined up.  When I got to Kiersten she was smiling and said “watch anything good lately?”  I started cackling and we chatted about how I don’t really watch a lot of tv, but that I would give it a try.  She said that if she could have hand picked anyone in the crowd who hadn’t watched it, she was happy it was me.

As always, Kiersten is a lot of fun and as always, this is just a fraction of what was said.  I did go home and start to work on this recap and watch the first episode and I will say I’m intrigued.  I haven’t decided if I want to watch the show before I read the book…

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