When :01 First Second asked me to join their vampiric litblog tour, I immediately knew what I'd talk about: Christopher Golden's The Shadow Saga, as well as his works connecting to the television series Buffy the Vampire Slayer and Angel.

I can thank Buffy the Vampire Slayer for getting me in touch with Christopher Golden, who is one of my closest friends and biggest supporters.

In 1997, Pocket Books decided to launch a line of BtVS books, starting with Richie Tankersley Cusick's novelization of the premiere episode. (Cusick had also written the novelization of the film five years earlier.) It was followed by Halloween Rain, the first-ever original BtVS novel, written by Christopher Golden and Nancy Holder. Because I watched and enjoyed the show, I naturally wanted to sink my teeth into the new books as well.

After reading Golden's Slayer stories, I looked him up at the bookstore and at the library to see if he had written anything else. He had. His first novel, Of Saints and Shadows, had been released just a few years earlier. It too was about vampires. In fact, it was the first volume in trilogy.* Intrigued, I drifted into Shadows and didn't emerge until I was finished.

*Years later, he wrote and released a fourth Octavian book, The Gathering Dark. Though it's definitely a continuation of the trilogy, I feel as though it can also be read independently of the series. The Gathering Dark is actually my favorite book in The Shadow Saga. I swear it has nothing to do with the fact that I'm in it.

As I stated in an earlier post, The Shadow Saga contains what Buffy Summers would describe as "violence, strong language, adult content." These books are intense, frightening, and, let me say it again, dark. They discuss vampirism, life, death, immortality, magick, and religion. They are not for children. They are for anyone who likes vampire tales.

The order of publication is as follows:
- Of Saints and Shadows
- Angel Souls and Devil Hearts
- Of Masques and Martyrs
- The Gathering Dark

Golden has stated repeatedly that he'd like to write more books in the Saga. If and when he does, I'll be first in line to read them. The people who saw me the day The Gathering Dark came out can testify to that.

Golden wrote many, many BtVS/Angel novels and comics. The Gatekeeper Trilogy, co-authored with Nancy Holder, was an impressive undertaking. Golden detailed the dark pasts of the villains and of the Watchers Council in the historical novel Spike & Dru: Pretty Maids All in a Row. I loved the serial novel The Lost Slayer, the premise and setting of which allowed Golden free reign. There's a very special place in my heart for Monster Island, the first-ever BtVS/Angel crossover novel, which Golden wrote with Thomas E. Sniegoski.

I could go on and on, but I'll sum it up like this: Golden has proved time and time again that he not only understands but respects the worlds which others create and into which he is invited, such as the Slayerverse. Better still, when his imagination is allowed to run freely in his original stories such as The Shadow Saga, Strangewood, and The Boys are Back in Town, you never know what he'll create - but you know it's going to be good.

Learn more about Christopher Golden, The Shadow Saga, and Golden's BtVS/Angel novels.

If you've yet to read any Golden books and are looking through his backlist of 100+ releases, please allow me to suggest where to start.

Check out the serial interview with Christopher Golden.

Take a ride on the :01 First Second vampiric litblog tour.

Look at my calendar and you'll see something written on every day, something I will be doing. Look at Christopher Golden and you'll see him writing every day, something I should be doing.

Here's a quick Q&A with the Golden boy, the first part of what we've deemed a serial interview. (I nearly wrote, "It's a killer." Then I thought against it. Then I wrote it anyway. Get it? Serial interview? I know it's Monday morning, but...)

How's life?

Life is craaazy. Good stuff, mostly. But I desperately need a vacation. I'm directing a play at my kids' school for the second year in a row and I love it, but I should NOT be doing it. My eldest is going to be in high school in the fall, which seems impossible. My brother and his fiancee had a baby in August, and that makes me very happy. And I'm totally stoked to go to England this fall for British Fantasycon, where I'll be a guest of honor (oh, all right, "honour," since it's in the UK). I haven't been over there for several years and I've missed it horribly.

Read any good books lately?

Yes! I spent three or four months reading very little for pleasure, just research on (alternately) Japan and New Orleans, and re-reading a ton of Neil Gaiman for PRINCE OF STORIES: THE MANY WORLDS OF NEIL GAIMAN, which I wrote with Hank Wagner and Steve Bissette. But yep, I've read Neil's upcoming THE GRAVEYARD BOOK, which is sheer genius and may be my favorite novel he's written.. I also recently read CROOKED LITTLE VEIN by Warren Ellis, which is sick, mad genius, PROMISES TO KEEP by Charles de Lint, who is one of my favorite writers, and DUMA KEY, which is the best thing Stephen King has written in a very, very long time. Absolutely loved it.

How does your reading affect your writing, and vice-versa?

You'd have to monitor me and decide for yourself. I'd like to think that when I'm reading someone good, my writing improves, and when I'm reading crap for fun...my writing doesn't suffer. Heh. But that doesn't seem very logical, does it? So hopefully reading doesn't affect my writing one way or the other. Writing only affects my reading in the sense that I'll usually try to avoid anything that's at all similar to whatever it is I'm working on at any given time. For instance, I'm starting a new book for Bantam that concerns supernatural events on an ocean setting, and I've got a novella by Lee Thomas that I've been wanting to read, but I've purposely NOT read it and won't until I've finished this novel.

What's your writing routine?

If you're a Wallace and Gromit fan, you'll understand what I mean when I say it's a bit like being dumped into the "wrong trousers" every morning. For those unfamiliar with that bit of genius, I'll just refer you to the runaway mine car scene in INDIANA JONES AND THE TEMPLE OF DOOM. I get up, I answer e-mail, I try to take care of things people have been waiting too long for, and then I work for as long as I can on whatever I'm writing at the moment until my wife sends our daughter up to drag me downstairs for dinner. All too often this includes weekends, and all too often I come back upstairs after dinner. The past six months have been the busiest of my life, and I'm now working toward the time, a few months hence, I suspect, when I'll be able to have my nights and weekends back. I only hope my children will recognize me, and my wife will remember my name.

Happy Mother's Day to Christopher's awesome wife!

Read the next part of the serial interview.

Read other Christopher Golden-tagged posts at Bildungsroman.

Visit Christopher Golden's website.