Buffy : Tales of the Vampires

Novelist Jackie Kessler sinks her teeth into the Buffyverse

So, the entire world has changed.

After having skulked through history’s shadows, vampires are now front and center, their existence revealed to the world at large, and undead is most definitely the new black. Currently the hottest thing in Western Civilization, vamps now find themselves feted and fawned over by the public at large.

To chronicle this rather drastic turn of events in the Buffy cosmos, Dark Horse Comics has been turning to noted authors to put their own spins on Joss Whedon’s little toy top. Last year, Becky Cloonan took us into a world where vampires are much more popular than Slayers. Next up, Jackie Kessler gives us "Carpe Noctem", which will appear on the Dark Horse Presents MySpace website.

No one was perhaps more surprised than Kessler herself to be approached by Dark Horse to tackle this story. Although she has been a longtime reader of comics, the successful dark fantasy author (the Hell on Earth series of books, as well as the upcoming HUNGER, among other genre works), had never written for the medium before.

"I was at Dragon*Con last year, on a number of panels," she says. "Scott Allie, the editor of Dark Horse Comics, was on a few panels with me. After the last one, we chatted, and I offered to give him one of my books. He asked if I had anything dark. Yep! I sent him HELL’S BELLES."

Not thinking much about it after having left the convention, Kessler was pleasantly surprised by another unexpected path crossing with Allie not long afterward. "I had a Twitter contest and he was one of the ten random winners. Truly random... copies of my second book went to the first ten people who re-Tweeted. He was number two. When I emailed him to confirm his address, he asked if I’d be interested in doing a comic book project for him."

And... ?

"I was. And when he asked if I would be comfortable writing in the Buffyverse, I jumped at the chance. Writing any story set in the Buffyverse is a dream come true."

As a fan of Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Jackie certainly needed no introduction to the characters. "Scott asked if I’d be willing to write a "Tales of the Vampires" short, one that showed more of the Buffyverse from the point of view of the vampires. I came up with an idea and wrote a synopsis. Scott and I worked together to revise it. Joss approved it. And then it was time for me to write the script."

Rather than take the perhaps obvious route of showing vampires simply reveling in both their power and their celebrity, sucking blood and killing with seeming impunity (BtVS readers will recall what a ratings boon it was for Harmony Kendall’s reality show when she slew a Slayer on the air), Kessler has opted for something that delves more deeply into character and psychological issues. "Not all vampires are happy being thrown into the spotlight. Some of them prefer the shadows," she reveals.

The story follows two vampires, Cyn and Ash, who are diametrically opposed to one another both in personality as well as in their take on being ‘outed’ to the mortal world. Just about the only thing that makes them friends/family is that they were sired by the same vampire. Other than that, they are as different as night and... a sunless day.

Click on the link for more :

http://slayerlit.us/features/feature4.htm