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Christopher Golden - Interviewed at the Eclipse convention, July 2002

Return to Oz
  What came first as an idea - the Oz novel or graphic novel? Was it always planned that there would be two?

Not at the beginning. Early on, I had just decided to pitch it as a comic book because it just seemed like such a natural story to do as a comic, and I thought visually it would be great.

I wanted to know what that story was, what happened in the time between [Oz] departing and returning. But then... I was talking to my editor at Pocket, and I said, "You know, it would make a great book, what do you think about it?"

Her response was essentially [that] as long as it was alright with Dark Horse, they would be happy to do it, and as long as the book didn�t beat the comic book into the marketplace, that was fine.

So, the book is completely different, and I actually think the book is a much better read than the comic. I expected the comic to feel bigger, and it doesn�t. There were elements to the story that I wanted to include that it didn�t seem to make sense to use in the comic.

When I went to write the book, I wanted to try to get that classic American Tom Sawyer, Huckleberry Finn sense of departing your home, leaving everything behind on a search for self. There�s something classic about that that I really enjoyed which wasn�t really in the comic.

Plus I really liked [werewolf hunter] Cain and I wanted to use him, so that whole element was added. And you get to see more of Oz�s life.

It was so difficult to write a novel over 300 pages where your main character, the protagonist, is one of the few characters with speaking parts in the entire book [who] doesn�t say anything.

Did you want to make it more dialogue-based?

Well, it couldn�t be, it just couldn�t be. And it�s funny, because in interviews people would always ask, "Who�s your favourite character to write, who�s the hardest character to write?" and my answer was always Oz.

[He�s] the most difficult character to write, and now here I am, the masochist, writing an entire novel around this guy. And I hope that he comes off in character. That was my biggest fear, that I would have to give him so much dialogue that he wasn�t in character.

Messing about in boats
  Tell us about you new Buffy novel, The Wisdom of War.

The Wisdom of War is an idea that I had a very long time ago, and it sat in my computer awaiting the next opportunity to do an original Buffy book that included the whole cast.

How can I describe this? As usual there�s a new bit of hell in the Hellmouth. This time, coming from the oceans. Bizarre things are happening, boats are sinking, people are turning into things that aren�t quite human, and California sea lions are coming up on to the beach in droves, terrified of something that�s in the water.

Everybody in town feels unreasonable dread that seems to spring from nowhere. It�s very much a Lovecraftian Buffy, and meant to be. With a grain of salt, it�s still very much Buffy, but it�s heavily Lovecraft influenced, on purpose.

This was so much fun because The Wisdom of War was about what happens when monsters appear in Sunnydale that Buffy�s not quite certain she should kill. Which isn�t to say that they�re not doing things that they shouldn�t be doing, that she doesn�t need to stop them, but, are they really something she needs to kill? Why are they here?

It�s also about, without going into it too much, a conflict between Buffy and the Council. And a conflict between the Council and another group called the Order of Sages, which is introduced here for the first time.

Tom Sniegoski and I wrote the Buffy video game, and for promotional purposes, we wrote a prologue novella of 100-odd pages that leads into the game. The Order of Sages also appears in that novella. It�s actually a Spike and Dru novella, leading into the game.

In any case, the Order of Sages are similar to the Council in a way, they�re just a little bit more... did you ever have Wild Kingdom over here?

Er, we don�t think so...

Wild Kingdom with Marlon Perkins was a show in the US about capturing [animals]. They would tag the animals and study them. The classic line from Marlon Perkins was, [whilst] he and Jim, who was his sidekick, would be observing the animal, [would be: "while Jim approaches the tiger, and drags it down to tag it, I�ll remain here at safe distance."

And that�s the Order of Sages, in a way. They catalogue and study and examine, to try to understand the pre-human species. They�re not out for slaughter, necessarily. They think that there�s a better way. That doesn�t mean that they�re better than the Council, just that they have different official motivations. But what ends up happening in the story is that their philosophy about what to do with these creatures is at odds with the Council�s, and the Council gets very upset with Buffy as usual.

And let�s just say that there�s a great deal more at stake than you at first realise, because Buffy quickly finds herself trapped between two species of monsters running around Sunnydale.

So it�s a great deal of fun, and I get to use Faith, which was great. There were a number of characters that I wrote in book form for the very first time in this book. I got to write Tara and Willow as a couple. I had never written Tara in a novel before before and I got to write them as a couple which was great, because they�re probably the most in love of the couples you see on the show. I got to write Dawn for the first time, which was fun. I got to write for Anya, and Faith.

And actually Chapter One is a piece that I really enjoyed writing because it�s Xander, Anya, Willow, Tara, Dawn and Buffy jammed into a car on the way to the beach. And it�s a lot of talk about how Buffy, she�s been to the beach twice in the entire time that she�s lived in this beach community. And it was just great to have the interplay of all these characters particularly because I had never written them as a group before. It was so much fun to write, really.

Angel anthology
  What will be your involvement in the upcoming Angel anthology, The Longest Night?

Well, I�m not sure if I�m supposed to tell you, but I�m going to because nobody�s told me not to. The Longest Night is about the Winter Solstice, the longest night of the year. And each of the stories takes one hour of that night.

My story is one of the first ones in the book, it may well be the first. It�s called I Still Believe. I don�t want to give [too much] away, because it�s only a short story, but I will say that it revolves around Angel and Cordelia�s friendship (not relationship, in the sense that they may be going towards that) but how much they truly care for each other.

And it involves Angel Christmas shopping. Which was really, really, really fun.

Monster Island
  What are the plans for your next collaboration with Tom Sniegoski, Monster Island?

He�s working on his chapter right now. We�re almost halfway done. And we should be finished with the first draft by early October, I think.

Will that be one of your more adult Buffy novels?

Well, it�s funny. I wrote The Lost Slayer as an adult book and they published it as a teen series. It�s pretty grim, The Lost Slayer. Monster Island isn�t quite as grim, but it�s huge. And it has one of the most grown-up themes that we�ve done.

When I was doing Sins of the Father, one of the people from Fox said, "You never see the parents in Buffy the Vampire Slayer. You particularly never see the fathers, because fathers haven�t affected these characters. Fathers aren�t really an influence on the characters."

And my response was, "You�re out of your mind!" In fact, I would venture to say that fathers have influenced these characters more than anything.

Because of their absence?

Well, think about it. Angel�s father, Wesley�s father, Xander�s father, Tara�s father, Buffy�s father. Cordelia�s father lost all his money and had to flee the country. The Host�s mum. There�s a couple that I�m leaving out, point being, most of these characters wouldn�t be who they are if their fathers hadn�t been a**holes.

In Monster Island, the villain is a demon by the name of Axtious. Axtious is a pure-bred demon who is working with a group to eliminate half-breeds. I won�t tell you why, or any more of the story than that. Suffice to say that he has spent years searching for a magical way to take a half-breed and drain the human out of it to make it a pure-blood demon, because he has a son who�s a half-breed and he wants to make him full-demon so he can accept him.

The only problem is that when he returns to Los Angeles looking for his son because he�s finally found this magical spell that will do it, he finds that his son, Francis Doyle, is dead. And he blames Angel.

That�s a good one, isn�t it? Well, it�s huge, and it�s great because we�ve got this huge sub-plot with Gunn. Gunn has his own story running through the background with a kid named Calvin, a teenager from his neighbourhood whose parents were killed by vampires... well, it�s more complicated than that. We�ve got a lot of other stuff going on, it�s the first time some of these characters have met. But also, things like, what would a conversation between Fred and Tara be like?

Buffy's double
  Having scripted the Buffy video game, have you seen it working yet?

I�ve seen a very early version and I must say, I can�t wait to play this game. It looks really cool. The gameplay is good, and all the voices, save Sarah�s, are the actual actors. And the girl who does Sarah�s voice sounds exactly like her. They got a great voice double.

How do you play it?

There are lots of cut-scenes. It�s why they hired us, because they knew that they needed a story, they knew that they needed to make it feel like Buffy. It�s very like putting yourself in the longest episode of Buffy ever done. So there�s plenty of fighting, I mean it is a battle game, but you really do need to understand the plot of the game, and figure it out as you go along, what they�re really up to. The hard thing was, for them, was figuring out how much of the cut-scenes they could remove, because some were very long.

Do you think this will lead to others?

There�s always talk. There is going to be another Buffy game, but I can�t really tell you any more about it. You can say there�s going to be a second one. We�re in preliminary stages of working on the story for that one.

Ferry Scary
  You are a prolific writer outside the world of Buffy too. Tell us about your latest horror novel, The Ferryman.

You have to import it. It�s funny, because Prowlers just came out in a UK edition, but [for] The Ferryman and my original adult horror novels I have been unable to get a publisher for over here. I don�t know enough people or I haven�t made the right connections yet I guess.

It�s amazing to me because I have readers here. I have a lot of readers here. Prowlers pre-orders were about 75 per cent of what they do on Buffy. That�s pretty good! So, they�re happy, and I�m hoping to eventually get all of my original novels out in England. It�s frustrating. So Ferryman you have to have as an import.

I love that book, and it�s gotten great response. I�ve got quotes from Clive Barker, Charles DeLint and Poppy Brite. I feel like I hit one out of the park on that book. It�s the story of a woman who foolishly enough left a man who loved her dearly for an old college flame just because she couldn�t imagine not giving it another try. He immediately got her pregnant, and as soon as he found out she was pregnant he left her. This is all the story that leads into the story of the book.

As the book begins, she�s in premature labour at eight and a half months, she nearly dies, and she loses the baby. And while she is at death�s door, she has a near-death experience in which she meets Charon, the ferryman of the river Styx. But she denies him and survives and he doesn�t like that, but he�s also fascinated by her because nobody does that, and he becomes enamoured with her, he becomes, in his own twisted way, in love with her, and he follows her back to this world to pursue her.

Meanwhile, while she�s recovering, she�s rekindling her relationship with the man she�d left, and Charon doesn�t like that very much. And that�s what it�s about. It�s really interesting because as much as it has certain elements in common with the big horror tropes, things like Nightmare on Elm Street, it�s probably the most thoughtful thing I�ve ever written. It�s a 400 page contemplation on the nature of death and living.

Adoring Amber
  Tell us about working with Amber Benson for the next Willow and Tara comics

You just don�t have enough time for me to say all the good things about Amber I need to say. I just adore her. We�ve talked about working on a number of other projects together. She�s just a joy. She�s just the most genuine person I�ve met who works in California. Or in the Los Angeles area. So anything she wants to work on, I�d definitely do.

We had a lot of fun working on a second Willow and Tara. She�s very fond of Michelle [Trachtenberg] so we wrote a story where Willow and Tara go on the road with Dawn. It�s nice, because with the first one, for foolish reasons, they wouldn�t let us write them as lovers. People complained about that because, as usually happens, by the time the comic came out, they�d already kissed on the show. She�s already told people she was gay. But at the time we were doing the comic, even though Joss knew and all the writers knew, and it had been patently obvious to most people watching the show, they wouldn�t let us say it. It was infuriating, because then people would yell at us. People gave us a hard time as if we were shying away from it.

So it was nice to be able to portray them as in love. What I find really interesting is, sometimes it feels saccharine to write romance. Sometimes when you�re writing romance between two characters, it doesn�t feel quite real. Or it�s a bit too much. And I feel almost like, you can make those two characters as dewey-eyed in love and it would never be too much. I just love their relationship. So I had a great time, and she is such a talented writer.

It has to do with Green Jack, the spirit of the wood, and it�s really fun.