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Ashley Connell and Dori Koogler - Authors of Buffy: These Our Actors
Kick Start
How did you get involved in writing These Our Actors together?
Dori: Ashley said to me one day, "You're going to write a Buffy book with me." We've known each other for years, and she's always encouraged my writing. And by 'encouraged' I mean in that firm, boot-meets-backside way.
[It's] a good thing, because left to my own devices, I'd still be scribbling soppy story fragments in school notebooks and not showing them to anybody.
I think she finally got tired of my shilly-shallying about whether or not I wanted to write. She decided I was ready, dragged me up there onto the High Diving Board, and gave me a push. I was terrified, but I found out that I really enjoyed writing the book, and want to do it again. So I'm terribly grateful, even if that long fall to the water was a bit of a shock...
Ashley: It seemed like a good idea at the time. I've had an image in my head ever since I was an undergraduate of sitting in an empty theatre and watching the characters sitting in the audience talking to each other.
And Dori's getting a double Masters in Theatre, so it was an opportunity to do something with that image and maybe have some fun with Spike while we were at it.
Looks Familiar (Cecily spoilers)
Did you get any feedback from Joss and co. about expanding upon the events in Fool for Love? Did anyone at Pocket Books or Fox get twitchy about all the new TV continuity regarding Cecily?
Dori: We got feedback from Fox, who license Buffy, but there wasn't really any contact with Joss and Mutant Enemy. The only thing they really told us was that Spike had to be evil, and we couldn't give him a last name.
We'd already plotted out the book when we heard the Cecily rumours, and I figured we were Jossed for sure, but nobody said anything to us about it. The novels are technically Alternate Universe stories, anyway, so that gave us a little leeway.
Ashley: I don't think Joss Whedon is as involved in the books - where would he find the time? Which is a shame, really, because wouldn't that have been a kick! I think it might also have resolved a couple of minor issues a bit better, but that's water under the bridge.
I wasn't worried about the is-Halfrek-really-Cecily question. They never gave a definitive answer to that, and there are dozens of ways the two of them could have run across each other.
You're History
Did one of you write the historical passages and the other the modern ones, or did you fully cross-collaborate on the novel?
Dori: I wrote most of the historical passages, and Ashley did most of the present-day scenes. Of course, we each wrote bits in each other's sections; for instance, that wonderful bit from the party in Fool For Love was Ashley, and the stairwell scene with Spike and Willow was me.
But we had talked extensively about how the two plots would intertwine, how they influenced each other.
Ashley: There are places where we know Dori did some things and I did some things, and there are some passages in there where neither one of us can figure out for the life of us who wrote it. Which is kinda neat.
Sidelined
It's not often that a novel sidelines Buffy. Was there resistance to this, and do you think the Buffy novels should be experimenting in this way more?
Dori: One of the most frequent notes we got was, "Where's Buffy? We haven't seen her in X number of pages now..."
I really like stories that focus on characters that aren't Buffy. We see her story in the show, and it's interesting to me to see how the other characters are dealing with everything that's going on in Sunnydale. I loved The Zeppo, for instance.
What I'd really love to see is a book that deals with Buffy and the Scoobies only peripherally - because Life In Sunnydale has to be interesting if you're a cop or an EMT. How do these people, in particular, cope with the Hellmouthy weirdness they've got to be seeing every day?
Is it unusual to see cartons of blood in the refrigerators at 7-Eleven? How to the Emergency Room doctors and nurses deal with 'neck ruptures,' and what do the coroners do to keep the customers from rising from their coffins and eating them before the funerals? Is there some kind of unspoken admiration for people with bite scars because they survived?
Ashley: Oh, that would be cool. I doubt they'd go for it, though. "They're Buffy books, after all."
Which is why I'm a little confused about why they cut out a bit I had at the very beginning with Willow and Buffy - the conversation they had where Buffy tells Willow she's dropping the drama class.
That was one of the problems with the book, by the way - they want more or less parallel continuity with the show, but at the same time the production schedule on a book is such that if you write a proposal in October, and go through the process of getting it approved by the editor, approved by the studio, go to contract, write the book, get the changes, make the changes, get the copyedit (which we didn't get, unfortunately), get the galleys [a simply bound, rough version of the final book], proof the galleys, get the book finally into print - you're miles behind the show. You're miles behind the show from the time you write the proposal until it gets approved. It's a no-win situation.
It would be better, I think, if they did do more alternate-universe type things or Life in Sunnydale type things. But they feel that they're selling the show, and that's not the show, so there you are.
Play Time
Did either of you appear in school plays, and if so, what was your favourite memory of them?
Dori: Oh, I was practically a theatre major at university - I took classes, I did shows every semester, but I never did declare a drama major. I think my favorite memory is playing the wife in To Be Continued... She doesn't even appear until the third act, but by the time she comes on, she's been built up so much that I got lots of gasps from the audience.
I was always much better at acting than doing tech work, but I did costumes and props and lights, a little of everything.
Ashley: I did a couple of plays in high school, and my freshman year at university I practically lived in the theatre, painting flats, making paper flowers for props, anything anybody needed. But then I declared an anthropology major, and spent less time behind the stage.
I was very very lucky, though, to have a terrific teacher, Dr. Tom Erhard, who was at that time in the English Department. I took Modern American Drama, Modern European Drama, Restoration and Eighteenth Century Drama, and Early European Drama classes from Tom. He was the first teacher who would let me write exactly what I thought and actually enjoyed reading it. I owe Tom any success I've ever had as a writer, because he let me fly.
Years after I graduated, I discovered that he was leading theatre tours to London. So I've gone on four three-and-a-half-week theatre tours. On one trip I think I saw something like eighteen plays. I love London theatre. I want to go back!
Influences
To what extent did your theatre experiences influence the novel?
Dori: I've been doing community theatre since I graduated from university. It's how I met my husband, actually - we met at auditions for the first show I was cast in, worked on shows together for the next six months, and when I came to rehearsal wearing an engagement ring one night, people were amazed because I hadn't had time to date anyone. I'm still working with our community theatre here, mostly acting. I usually play character roles, and have had some swell roles in Ray Sharkey shows.
theatre is just something so ingrained in my life that it seemed natural to include it in the book.
Snarky Darla
Who did you find to be the most interesting character to write for?
Dori: I'm sure there are people out there who will be shocked and amazed to find this out, but... it was Darla. She's just so... snarky. Especially in her scenes with Spike; I really got to unleash my Inner Bitca when I was writing the two of them.
Ashley: I just cracked up reading Dori's take on Darla. I absolutely loved it. I think she really nailed her - so to speak!
I enjoyed writing Willow, but I think I'd like to tackle- er, write more for - Giles.
Spike Fans (season 7 spoiler)
What are your thoughts on the way Spike has evolved as a character over the years?
Dori: How much space have you got...?
I've been a huge Spike fan since School Hard. I knew from What's My Line 2 that this vamp was extraordinary; he could do something no other vampire was capable of, according to the rules of the Buffyverse - love selflessly.
In the scene where Spike brings Angel to Drusilla, the seeds for what we saw all through the last couple of seasons are tossed out in a split-second series of expressions on James Marsters' face - hurt to jealousy to understanding what she needed and being okay with it. I was completely blown away by that tiny moment, and I've been extremely happy with where they've taken Spike as a character, because I saw that potential in him from the beginning.
I adore stories about the redemptive power of love. Watching Spike struggle over the last few seasons to change himself when everything he knew, everyone around him, all his hundred and some years of experience with vampires told him it was impossible, hopeless, doomed, that he could never rise above his vampire nature, and then watching him do just that... Well, wow!
Of course, there are fans out there who think that Spike can never make up for all the bloodshed and horror and evil - and they're right. He can't make up for any of the things he's done, he can't bring those people back.
But I don't see redemption as a destination so much as a journey, and I believe Spike has been on that journey since Intervention. I believe that Spike's struggle toward redemption in the face of impossible odds is the important thing, that he keeps trying to make himself into something new. His love for Buffy is carving him out from the inside, changing his interior shape, and he's not going to be able to go back to being the same Big Bad he was before he loved her.
Ashley: Spike's an interesting contrast to Angel, and maybe some of it is due to the fact that the actor didn't know what they were going to throw at him as backstory! You really have to wonder how much of Spike is the inner William and how much is the demon? I think we're getting to see that now.
Marsters has gotten to play so many different characters in this one character, and find ways to connect them all, knit them all into one coherent image - it's just a treasure trove.
Dori and I don't always agree about Spike, either. I don't think he's necessarily been trying to change to make up for anything. He knows that what he did was wrong, but he was all right with it while he was doing it. The only reason he wanted to stop doing it was because it made Buffy reject him, not because he thought it was bad. He didn't have a soul, and I suspect that in this context "soul" kind of equates to "conscience."
But now we've got a new twist on it. With Season Seven he's got his soul back, and he's hearing the voices of the dead, and it's driving him crazy. And we're seeing a new Spike, a more mature one (at least in his moments of sanity, which I think are more than we've been shown). He's hearing voices, but the voices are real, after all.
Past Marsters
Is a series of novels entirely set around the early days of Spike, Dru, Angelus and Darla something you'd be interested in developing?
Dori: Oh, I'd definitely be interested in that! I had so much fun writing Darla, and I'd love to have an opportunity to look at the relationship between the four of them again. Somehow I can see them in the Old West in the late 1800's, maybe in a Montana frontier mining town.
Darla would hate that, all the mud and dust and lack of nice things, and it'd just be so much fun to see how they'd ended up there, what drove them to hide out in such an isolated locale. I'd also love to have them show up in India during the British colonisation.
Ashley: There are limits to what you can do with Spike, because he's pretty young. You can't take any of them much farther back than the eighteenth century or so. But there are possibilities, yes there are. Vampires at Gettysburg... Hmmmmmm.