Dru, Steinbeck and the Book of Deer

Foreword: I'd planned to tell you one last story about fate, destiny, Buffy and free will. However, fate itself intervened with this Waitrose advert about some pleb called Phil getting involved with Keira Knightley at Christmas and cooking her a pie to cement their love... I believe it's called The Perfect Gift . But of course it's fantasy. Nothing like that could ever happen in real life. It's impossible. Impossible. I got a present for someone in 2010, and I wrote this article for an autism magazine in 2011. I called it A Christmas Gift . I'll let you guess who the girl was. Glasgow. Winter 2010 As I’m both autistic and grumpy, it would be easy to fall into cliché and call Christmas a soulless masquerade of empty commerce, fake cheer and religious hypocrisy; and to say that, faced with tinsel, Santas, elves, a pile of cards I have to send to people I scarcely even know and who might be dead, I feel like taking a midnight plane to Vegas and staying in a sleazy mo...

Two recent occurrences reminded me of time's ripple effect ( in which one tiny alteration to the past can drastically change the future ) and the tantalising possibility of a resurrected  Buffy the Vampire Slayer making an end run around the ripple by following a metaphorical Yellow Brick Road to a glorious and surprising finale.. First, that glorious drunkard, The Critical Drinker, explained how 2025 was turning out to be the year that broke Hollywood . According to The Hollywood Reporter, box office revenues for this October were  the lowest in twenty-seven years . Then  Dave Cullen dissed the return of nostalgia reboots . Old shows who had their day long ago being brought back in a desperate and probably doomed attempt to draw in the madding crowds. Shows like Malcolm in the Middle , Scrubs ... And Buffy . Normally, I'd agree with Dave, revel in the Drinker's sarcastic commentary about the latest disaster caused by Hollywood's current catastrophic cycle of creative ...

Buffy the Vampire Slayer : New Sunnydale 's pilot  has been filmed, Sarah Michelle Gellar is working with a crack team to continue ( not reboot) the Buffy saga and Ryan Keira Armstrong is an extremely talented young actress. So what could possibly go wrong? Just about everything, probably. And before anyone else does, I will admit my own bias. Yes, I think they should all do it my way but that's not going to happen. There are about three main reasons which, from my skewed perspective, mean that Buffy II is most likely buggered. The first one's a doozy! As previously explained, an extraordinary and seemingly inexplicable series of events threw myself, Dru and Juliet together, sent me halfway across the world to a mythic meeting on Sunset Boulevard and (it seems) presented me with the lost story arc . The way to continue Buffy , develop many of the existing characters' story arcs in completely unexpected ways and turn the Slayerverse upside down. The odds against all t...

"We've found cancerous cells." That's not the kind of information anyone wants to hear, but the brain of a focused Asperger can at least cope with it. That was last October and it's fair to say I had no more than "a brush with cancer." A grade 3b melanoma which only required one small op and a year long course of pills, not immunotherapy. Aspergers are also good at dealing with terrible facts and, oddly enough, because I'd just gone back to my literary roots in Monterey and seen the Book of Deer in Cambridge I was a little more phlegmatic than most about the possibility of death. The finales of both those experiences really had felt like the closing credits of two TV movies so while I didn't actually want to die, I was a little more at ease with my fate than others might have been. Both of my books ( Dear Miss Landau and The Legend of John Macnab ) were autobiographical or at least quasi-biographical. Macnab 's hero, John Sandiman, was fla...

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 with th...

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 s...