Vengeance explores the world of motivational speaking and self-help groups - have either of you had good or bad experiences with these in real life, or was there another reason for choosing this topic?
Scott Ciencin: Neither Dan nor myself has ever been involved with self-help movements or motivational speakers. That just turned out to be the best delivery system for the ideas we wanted to examine in this story.
When my wife Denise and I came up with the original concept for this story, we knew right off that we wanted to explore the overall idea of "perfection" and the terrible price so many people pay in their quest to quick fix themselves: women and men—and particularly teenagers—with eating disorders, disfigurements or permanent physical damage from plastic surgeries gone wrong, low or even no self-esteem, and more.
These people are selling their souls, literally dying every day around us to achieve ideals that are media-driven and from which certain individuals are making fortunes. It is, in a word, demonic. Once we had a connection between the Faust-like promises made by these self-help types and the idea of actual demons being behind it, we were good to go. Then Dan came in and added his usual dazzle and pizzazz to the proceedings.
Vengeance explores the world of motivational speaking and self-help groups - have either of you had good or bad experiences with these in real life, or was there another reason for choosing this topic?
