Your next big project is the serial novel The Lost Slayer - four novellas that will be published once a month for four months. How did that come about?

Lisa Clancy and I pitched it to Fox four times before they finally approved it. And I�m so glad they did. We originally pitched it before the episode The Wish was ever written, and there are some fundamental similarities that might make some fans go, "Oh, it�s just like The Wish. My response to that is that it existed before The Wish was put on paper.

That said, my reason for suggesting a serial novel was very simple. I loved the Green Mile, I loved how that felt - to get to the end and know you had a month to go before you could read the next part. It�s unusual in book format and I thought it would work really well with Buffy readers, because they�re used to serial television.

The Gatekeeper Trilogy had done really well and I thought that this story in particular was very well suited to the kinds of cliffhangers that you need to do a serial story.

As for the plot, in book one, Buffy finds herself in book one quite a bit in over her head - involved in something that�s happening in Sunnydale. She�s also a bit out of sorts because she has decided that in order to have a life of her own, she has to have a full life as the slayer and a full life as Buffy. She has to essentially live 200%

That causes her to have a sort of attitude about certain things, and that attitude leads her into trouble. She ends up supernaturally thrust along her own spiritual time line. Her soul has been pushed forward five years into her body at 24 years old - in a horrible dark apocalyptic future that is pretty much her fault.

So, the questions begin. "What is this future? What�s going on here? Can she help? What mistake did she make that led to this and how could she get back to fix it?"

It was really fun, because I got to kill boatloads of people and I got to take some of the expectations of the Buffy audience and really twist them around a little bit.