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Buffy and Angel Bring It Together
Holder and Mariotte combine their talents to bring Buffy and Angel together again.
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The Angel novels and episodes may share the same characters and back story lines, but the novelist works under different conditions all together. The Unseen Trilogy that encompasses a Buffy/Angel novel crossover is Jeff's latest work in which he pairs up with Nancy Holder to deliver a woosy of a ride! Jeff gives a little explainage on the plot of the trilogy, "The short answer of what this thing is about is," he pauses and thinks, "and I'm not sure there is one. Buffy is in Sunnydale of course, and she and Willow meet a friend of Willow's who has a serious problem. Her brother has disappeared and she's concerned because she's found a bunch of occult books. He's been messing around in the occult and gotten himself into some kind of problem. She's heard stories about Buffy's ability and asks them for help so that brings Buffy and Willow and the rest of the Scoobs into the story." Jeff then gives us the Angel of it, "Meanwhile in Los Angeles, Angel gets involved because a man has been falsely arrested and accused of murder. Basically, framed by some bad guys and he comes into it that way. What they eventually find out is that there are doors opening into parallel universes or other dimensions, opening both in Los Angeles and in Sunnydale. In Los Angeles, they're like one-way doors. In LA they're taking teenagers out of the city and disappearing them into these other dimensions or other universes. And at Sunnydale, there's a door that's letting stuff in." Jeff pulls it all together, "So, the case eventually brings them both together in Los Angeles, and then they have to go their own separate ways but eventually later in the trilogy they will have to through those doors themselves and travel to some of these alternate universes in order to save the kids and try to get everybody home in once piece. The first book is called The Burning."
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“In the world of comic books, Buffy is Superman and Angel is Batman."
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The book was released on the first of May, so there's no excuse for you to not read it. And let me tell ya, okay, but I'm going to tell anyway peeps! This book has been such a great read. Not only does it have the look, feel and smell of the Buffy/Angel-verse, but it's so detailed and well connected that it makes you wish you could see it as an actual televised Buffy/Angel Crossover Special! He continues, "The second book is called, Door to Alternity. It's the word that we made up. It doesn't mean anything except 'alternate eternity'. The third book is called, Long Way Home." By the way, Unseen: Door to Alternity will be released on June 26, 2001 and the last of the trilogy, Unseen: Long Way Home, is to be at a bookstore near you on August 28, 2001. You can order ahead from your local or on-line bookstore. I'm not done with the first novel and already I wish I could have the other two in my impatient little hands. This new adventure is a little more mature. "Yeah, a little darker," agrees Jeff. "I think they're doing some really cool stuff. Like I said I know some of the things that are happening later this season but obviously not everything. I can't wait to find out more. That's really a good sign for a TV show because there's none of that feeling like it's getting stale or it's getting old. There are always surprises in store. So, it's just exciting every Tuesday night that there's a new episode on."
"If I put down something that was totally wrong, it would be really obvious to all the fans."
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"I'm having to write to a lot of the Buffy people in the Trilogy, which I'm not as used to, so every now and then I'll watch an episode or I'll read one of the scripts, because we have a lot of the scripts here at home, and that helps to make the voices more clear in my mind." Once a characters voice is established it's as if the writer can imagine them standing and speaking directly to them. "Yeah, they have to be living in there so that I can almost literally hear their voice as I'm typing the words. The way that each character talks is so distinctive. That's really one of the things that's so cool about the show. You really know those characters. If I put down something that was totally wrong, it would be really obvious to all the fans." Yes, and we would knock on Jeff's door to let him know it, but being limited with your own ideas must be frustrating at times. "We are treated very well by Pocket Books with whom we have our contact with. But, I've been on the fringes of TV in various aspects of my life from having a degree in broadcasting to Wildstorm and I know that writers for the most part in TV are treated as really third-rate citizens and on Buffy that absolutely is not the case." That may be because Joss started out as a writer and he let's the writers' vision come through. "I think that's a big part of what makes it a good show," Jeff admits.
Part of a novelist's troubles, is that they sometimes write in the dark about certain aspects. They begin an approved work, but as episodes progress, changes are made to make the novel as complete as possible so that it incorporates new information of the latest episodes, but most importantly so that the novel has the feel of their respective programs. This happens in The Unseen Trilogy. "We are in the summer before the season that's on right now--the summer before season two of Angel and season five of Buffy. So, it's Wesley and Riley and Tara is in it. It's as updated as we could possibly have made it during the time that we had to start working on it. There were things revealed in the beginning of these seasons that we didn't know when we started working on them, but we were able to go back and work them in after the fact." Jeff provides us with one example, "Like we didn't know when we started where Angel was going to be living or setting up his office because his office had blown up at the end of the last season. So, we were writing all this stuff going, 'It would be really nice if you could tell us where he's going to live.' But they didn't tell us yet that he was working out of Cordelia's apartment. So that's where they are in the trilogy."
Entering the Angel City Limits
After the Muse of Inspiration has come and gone, Jeff continues, "I come up with a proposal that's eight or ten pages long and I submit that to Pocket Books. They read it and if they like it then they submit it to 20th Century Fox and the Buffy office. If everybody approves it then I can get to work. If not, then sometimes they have to make some changes to make it fit what they're vision is of -- where the show is going or sometimes we'll pitch a proposal to them that's too much like an episode that they have planned but hasn't aired yet." This is simply a mere coincidence! "Yeah, they'll just say 'You know, we're going to do something like that so either change these aspects of it or come up with a different idea.'" The novelists have contact mainly with Pocket Books, the publisher and not the actual producers and creators of the show. Episodes are well planned in advance so that any similarity is quickly recognized. Also, Jeff and other Angel writers have to keep the progressions of the characters in check because they cannot make any major changes to the them. The characters are licensed. "You have to figure out a way that it works with the regular characters without messing with the way the characters have been presented in the shows because those are Joss Whedon's characters. We can't change who they are for the purposes of our stories." This may seem restricting, but actually Jeff can create any character he likes like Mike Slade, the back-from-the-grave-detective in Hollywood Noir.
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“If I find a way to kill him and bring him back from the dead or the undead . . . when you are dealing with someone who's not alive to begin with."
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Since the producers are very Angel-aware it is easy for Jeff to stay guided on the preferred course, but he came up with the right idea things could get very interesting. "If I proposed doing something that was counter to what they wanted the direction of the character to be they would tell me. Obviously I know certain things. I know that I can't kill him. Although he is Angel," Jeff reflects, "so if I find a way to kill him and bring him back from the dead or back to the undead or however you would say it when you are dealing with someone who's not alive to begin with. But some of the obvious major things that you can do with a character in general fiction you can't do with a character in licensed fiction, which does not belong to you." He goes on to clarify, "But having said that at the same time I can make up someone like Mike Slade that I can do that stuff with if I want. He can be like a parallel Angel going through a similar arc and then they kinda reflect each other and offer a couple of facets of the same experience so that ultimately the reader gets a better understanding of what they're going through, hopefully."
In story terms, the character arc will show the development of individuals throughout the novel. "You never want a character to be the same person at the end of the book as at the beginning," Jeff explains. "Particularly, if it's a major character. Minor characters can kinda float along as who they are. We don't develop them as much but the major characters have to have a beginning point and an end point that's at a different place. The things that she or he goes through has to have some impact on him or her and sometimes that's hard to do with a character like an Angel because he's not my character, so I can't kill him. I can't turn him into Angelus forever. I can't even give him a new permanent girlfriend. Those are just decisions that as a novelist I'm not allowed to make." The characters take on a life of their own, especially when they've been around as long as Joss's and the writers are well familiar with them as well. "At this point I've written enough -- especially with the Angel gang -- that I pretty much know what the voices are like and I can figure out how to do the dialogue and how to set the situation so they're as true to the show as I can get them."
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