Dru, Steinbeck and the Book of Deer

"This splendid little book." (colophon, Book of Deer) "One of the principal antiquities of Scotland." (Third Statistical Account of Scotland, 1951-1992) The Book of Deer, the keystone around which I constructed The Legend of John Macnab (second sequel to John Buchan’s John Macnab ) in 2015, is a 9 th or 10 th century gospel illuminated manuscript containing the gospels of Matthew, Mark, Luke and John as well as the Apostle’s Creed. It is also a Celtic work of art. In addition, it has a land grant given by David I to the clerics of Deer and the earliest known examples of Scottish Gaelic annotations. These tell the story of Columba’s legendary journey from Iona to Aberdour (now in Buchan) in the 6 th century to found the Monastery of Deer, later succeeded by the Cistercian Abbey of Deer. The Book, composed of eighty-six folios and measuring about six inches by four in its new 1963 binding, is surprisingly compact. It’s bordered with knotwork and illuminated with d...

Every time I try reluctantly to accept that my Buffy -related saga's time has come and gone ( that's the lost story arc, Dear Miss Landau and the Dru Quartet ), something else seems to happen to make sure it stays dead and buried (a bit like a fledgling vampire, really) rather than - oh, I don't know - revitalising a faded piece of intellectual property in a new and unexpected manner, bringing jobs and employment to at least one small part of what's left of Hollywood and giving the fans what they may actually want. This time, it's ESTA. ESTA stands for electronic system of travel authorisation and is the means by which myself and others from forty-two countries worldwide are able to visit the States for ninety days without a visa. The Trump administration in, I think, its latest paroxysm of racism and intolerance intends to make the amount of hoops we have to go through to get the ESTA visa waiver increasingly intricate and probably impossible completely and corre...

I've talked a lot about all those strange coincidences which came together for me as easily as pie and all the disasters which befell Buffy because they didn't do it my way, so it wouldn't surprise me if most of you think I'm full of shit. That no one could be that lucky. That it was all coincidence. That, like Psycho-Pirate in the original Crisis on Infinite Earths (1986), I'm locked up in Arkham Asylum, gibbering about multiple universes ... Or like Buffy herself, in the episode Normal Again ... So for argument's sake I'll tell you another story, never before written down, about one of the greatest Buffy -related coincidences I ever experienced. Post-pandemic, I started travelling abroad again. In this case to Seattle (a destination neither Buffy nor Landau-related) in September 2022. One fine day, I took the ferry across to Bainbridge Island, found the famed Madison Diner and enjoyed a fantastic burger. That was all. I booked another trip to Seattle i...