Posts

The Best Gal in All the World

Image
Dear Miss Landau Chapter thirty-eight A date for breakfast   Friday March 12, 2010. I always call it the last day. The day I made the crossing. I didn’t lead a wagon train or drive an overloaded jalopy. But I went the same way, crossing the Mojave to Los Angeles . I woke up on time for the bus, broke my fast with free pancakes and coffee, and was quickly on my way. I remember the clear desert air, thin and cool, and breathing easy, as if it were yesterday, as I walked the 13 blocks back to the glitz and found my way to the Greyhound depot on South Main Street. I’d long forgotten that I didn’t need to go into Central LA. I could take the bus direct to Hollywood . It set out a little later than I’d expected, so I walked back across South Main and found a Starbucks. There was no free Wi-Fi there. Apart from my pancakes and coffee, nothing was free in Las Vegas . A hotel receptionist had explained that to me, too bored even to talk to me as soon as he realised I wasn’t ...
Post a Comment
Read more

Letter to Juliet

Image
  Apparently, Juliet thinks I hate her. No, I don't. Actually, I thought she hated me . Whatever the case, she'll always be my dear Miss Landau and that's all there is to it. I once said she was the best gal in all the world. She is. That's about it. Not sure about that beret, though...
Post a Comment
Read more

"Buffy" is Doomed. Except it Isn't.

Image
  You know, I think I'll just say it: I told you so. The new  Buffy  cannot possibly succeed because it's flying in the face of the fates and going the wrong way. It's as simple as that. I am not decrying the class and professionalism of Sarah Michelle Gellar's production team but, to me, it's as if they're trying to find their way through Carlsbad Caverns without a flashlight. ( Buffy the Infantry Officer . 11th November 2025) As also explained in The Glorious 14th , I frankly think Somebody Up There is still stomping hard on you lot because you're still going the wrong way and still seem unable to join the dots together. Unable to work out that that I might just have bought a flashlight, got it right, found Buffy the Vampire Slayer 's true continuation via that lost story arc and (as I myself just realised) continued a certain Xander Harris's own story arc into the bargain. Just to be clear, I know Nicholas Brendon was oft far from perfect and I d...
Post a Comment
Read more

It's High Noon, and Will Kane's Out of Town

Image
"We're in a very dangerous slippery slope. ... Where we are is so shocking to so many people they're sitting around saying 'ah, we can't really be there.' You know, we are a group of people that don't like the truth, Andy Ostroy. We don't like the truth so we pretend it doesn't exist, and we live in some realm of denial ... I want to wake you and all your viewers and listeners up to the systemic crisis that we have right now." ( Anthony Scaramucci on The Back Room with Andy Ostroy . 31st January 2026) "Why is there no backbone anywhere ... This is not what the United States stands for, and this is what the person behind you, George Washington, would have said. This is why we have these removal procedures in place to get this insane person out of office. Why are they not doing that, Jim Acosta?" ( Anthony Scaramucci on The Jim Acosta Show . 4th March 2026) Just in case anyone's forgotten, on the 4th of July 1776, the Founding Fathe...
Post a Comment
Read more

The Glorious 14th...

Image
  And so it has come to pass, that just like all the other attempts to get Buffy going again since about 2018,  New Sunnydale has been royally stomped . I'm sorry for Sarah Michelle Gellar but less sympathetic to the rest of you. I was part of an incredible series of events from 2009 onwards which landed me with a vampire flatmate in Partick, an email correspondence with a Buffy cast member, a trek across America to a fateful meeting on Sunset Boulevard, the against-all-odds publication of Dear Miss Landau  and also... I also wrote four novellas about Drusilla, jointly named the Dru Quartet. Two can be found on Archive of Our Own , but the last two have been held back because I believe I found a lost story arc from the original series which was meant to happen but didn't. This is the true continuation of Buffy . At least I think it is. I could put the other novellas in the Archive right now if I wanted, but I don't like self-publishing and I don't want to throw away ...
Post a Comment
Read more

Barbie's Autistic?

Image
  Okay, now I've seen everything. Mattel has brought out an autistic Barbie. Sometimes words fail me. This might be one of those times. At first glance, you might think a piece of plastic, complete with dinky little pink headphones, a slightly off-centre gaze, an equally dinky little pink finger clip fidget spinner (what?) and a loose-fitting purple pinstripe dress would make your average battle-scarred autistic adult melt down in Hulk-like rage, feeling like the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune many of us have suffered have been naively trivialised and far too neatly labelled. After all, I've never worn headphones in my life and in fact rather dislike them, can look you straight in the eye, don't even know what a fidget spinner is and don't wear loose-fitting clothes. However, I too am autistic and that's why it's called a broad spectrum disorder. A very nuanced understanding of this is required and it's very often misunderstood. Many of us can scar...
Post a Comment
Read more

A Bunch of Bloody Idiots

Image
If the UK and the EU don't want to be walked all over, sidelined and even invaded by Russia, we and they had better pull our fingers out, come to terms with raw and unvarnished reality, prepare, rearm and immediately and unequivocally back Ukraine with everything we've got. Britain's civilian population hasn't been directly involved in a military conflict since World War Two. We've forgotten every hard lesson that six year conflict taught us. We've run down the armed forces catastrophically , let NATO fall into disrepair (possibly the greatest mistake my own generation has made) and kidded ourselves that democracy was permanently in the ascendancy. That communism/fascism and authoritarianism was finished.  The Triumph of the West by J. M. Roberts and a belief in the end of history popularised by Francis Fukuyama, founded upon the idea that fascism and communism had been defeated, epitomised this incredible naivety. To explain why I'm talking like this, I...
Post a Comment
Read more