Scott, tell us about your experiences writing your previous Buffy novel, Sweet Sixteen. Which of the two serie' lead characters do you prefer writing for?
Scott Ciencin: I’ve been a huge admirer of Buffy and Angel since each of their respective starts. Each show has a central metaphor that allows writers to examine serious issues with characters who have depth, warmth, humour and deep emotional resonance.
Sweet Sixteen gave me a wonderful opportunity to give both Buffy and Dawn some very personal conflicts to work through, along with a chance to deal with the topic of toxic parents and how they can be as damning and damaging as the worst of demons, leaving scars that might not show, but would always be felt.
That said, there’s also a ton of fun and some outright goofy stuff in there too, to lighten things up... just like in the show. Lisa Clancy at Pocket [Books] has been a dream to work with. She really got what I was going for right from the beginning and helped me to realise the story to its fullest potential. Micol Ostow at Pocket has been fantastic, as well.
Ditto on how things went with Vengeance. We really went for an Angel-centric story with Vengeance, getting deep inside him and giving him a great inner conflict to resolve along with all the explosive outer dilemmas, and Lisa and Micol were really there for us.
As to choosing between Buffy and Angel, well, for me, that’s nearly impossible because the book lines are very different, each offering incredible opportunities and challenges in storytelling. The action in Angel can be a little easier to plot considering the wide array of locales and situations that are available in LA vs. Sunnydale, but having the tighter, almost stage-like settings with Buffy opens up doors on the character-front. They’re both immensely rewarding.
