Dru, Steinbeck and the Book of Deer

  They say all America looks for that sunlit city on the hill… ( Dear Miss Landau )   I remember standing there, looking up at the hill, waiting for her. I’d misquoted Ronald Reagan’s speech about the shining city on the hill. “The American vision of creating a new nation of free people, a country that would be a light unto the nations, and a shining city upon a hill.” I remember looking upon that hill, and I don’t mind saying Juliet was the shining light. That was many years ago, but I still come to praise my Caesar, not bury a tarnished rose. Perhaps Julia Drusilla, sister of Caligula, might have said the same. Or perhaps another Drusilla did so in her stead, standing at sunset on a faraway hill high above the streets of Avalon. It would be simple to pen a scandalous diatribe. To talk only of narcissism, secrecy, an unfinished documentary, a dreadful film, a stolen name and a bankrupt makeup line. So very simple. But I said I’d never do that. Enough. On ...

They say all America looks for that sunlit city on the hill, where the sidewalk ends and the good life begins. Perhaps there’s a hint of Mom’s apple pie in the air, malted milkshakes at the diner, the scent of coffee always on the brew; and that most delicate and fragile of things, the tinge of lost innocence in the air. Like seeing your first love as she was, before disappointment and disillusion changed her. For some, Sunset Boulevard signals the end of dreams.   It’s the last stop of the trolley car, the red light at the intersection, the look on the doctor’s face when he has to deliver terminal news. And then again, sometimes not. The message was thankfully clear.   The hopeful trust I’d carried for a year, across an ocean and over 3,000 miles of hard road, was about to be fulfilled. A small thing was going to happen.   Of no interest to most, of curiosity to some, perhaps a subject of speculation to others. From somewhere I smell the scent of roses, and I...

  Foreword Fargo was written in May 2024. At the time, it was a last desperate attempt to alert Buffydom to the lost possibility encapsulated within the Dru Quartet. The overlooked or aborted story arc I'd seen in that eureka moment fourteen years before , written into the Quartet's latter two chapters. This was before I finally found a blog platform I could work, before Juliet Landau's podcast scandal and Sarah Michelle Gellar got the idea of continuing Buffy the Vampire Slayer . This isn't meant to be a jealous critique. Ms. Gellar is an extremely talented actress and has assembled a crack production team. I am sure Ryan Keira Armstrong has great ability and potential. However, from my perspective it's as if they're all groping their way though Carlsbad Caverns without a flashlight. As if they don't actually know which way to go. And maybe I do. Maybe the route I've known and walked all these years is the one which was really meant to be. I'm not...

Fitting, somehow, that it finished and began in the church where I was named Anthony. Differently Wired fills out the tale of our last ten years, which began with a vampire flatmate (Drusilla from Buffy the Vampire Slayer ) whose story had to be told ( Drusilla’s Roses ), went on to an email correspondence with a Hollywood star (Juliet Landau) and led to a once-in-a-lifetime trek across America to that violent city on the edge of forever, Los Angeles. Then there was the publication of Dear Miss Landau (DML) and creation of DML’s stage musical, the scripting of three sequels to the original Drusilla’s Roses , resurrection and successful publication of my Great Scottish Novel, The Legend of John Macnab (second sequel to John Buchan’s original work), publication of eighty-odd blogs and articles for the Huffington Post UK et al ., seven meetings with Miss Landau at comic-cons ... And other treks. In 2012, 2013 and 2016. Providing traces of answers to the questions some asked after I me...