 he Internet is a vast and largely untamed resource. We've all heard stories about "chat room" stalkers that lure their victims with sly words of deception. But what if those stalkers were demons? John Passarella tackles this idea in his ANGEL novel Avatar as Angel and the crew investigate a series of murders connected by only one thing: Internet chat rooms.
John Passarella
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John Passarella is a father of three and resides in Swedesboro, New Jersey. He's a full time professional author interested in "dark fantasy, supernatural thriller, horror, science fiction, fantasy, and sometimes mystery genres". His first professionally published book, Wither, won the Bram Stoker Award for Best First Novel. He is also an active member of the Horror Writers Association (HWA), the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America (SFWA), The Authors Guild, and the Garden State Horror Writers. Also a self-proclaimed guru in technology, he has worked extensively with computers and redesigned the Horror Writers Association's website. His ANGEL novel Avatar is his second venture into Joss Whedon's world (the first being his Buffy the Vampire Slayer novel Ghoul Trouble).
John has been exercising his writing skills nearly his entire life. He commented that "as long as I can remember I've been telling stories. It started in grade school, I would draw stories on typewriter tablet paper, like homemade comic books. I would either make up my own stories or I'd adapt stories from TV shows like Star Trek. When I was 12, I acquired my older sister's abandoned manual typewriter and I started typing one-page stories. I've been writing stories as opposed to drawing them ever since." John has also been interested in computers since their entry into mainstream life. He got a degree in Accounting from college. By the time he got his second job they were just starting to get personal computers and no one seemed to be able to manipulate them. "I seemed to be the one person in the Accounting Department who was interested in getting these different pieces of technology to talk to each other. So the percentage of my job that was accounting switched over to systems and computers and it just gradually grew from there," he said. Since he was so interested in computers, when the Internet boomed he jumped at the opportunity to expand his knowledge, "I started doing web pages back in 1996, which is a long time in Internet years".
Avatar
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While technology became a large part of his life John noted that he never forgot his first passion: writing. "I would write at lunch time. After I moved from a cubicle to an office, I would close the door at lunchtime, eat my lunch for the first half and write during the rest. Mostly I wrote at home, late at night." He has been dedicated to writing and feels that "a lot of people who want to be writers say they don't have time to write, but I think if you need to write, you find the time to write. I've always managed to fit writing into my life." At one point there was a danger of his technology hobby ebbing away at his writing. However, when his first novel Wither sold he admitted that "it was kind of a wake up call for me creatively. I decided to set aside a lot of these areas of technology that interested me, telling myself 'Writing is my first love and I really need to devote time to it now that I've had my first success'.
When structuring a novel John tries to follow a three act structure. "The story turns at an act break. The characters find out something important. The first act break in Avatar comes when our heroes make a discovery about the nature of the demon," he explained. When talking to high school classes he describes the acts as, "set up, conflict, and resolution." When he first began to seriously write John found himself often stuck at the second act, "As an early writer a lot of times my novels would fizzle out around page 90. Much later I realized I was jumping into them as soon as I knew the first act and a bit of the resolution. What I didn't know was that middle act, the longest act. Ninety pages into a novel is basically the end of the first act. My problem was I had no idea how to get from there to the resolution," he explained. Now he tries to construct detailed outlines beforehand to identify the turning points of the story and then write scenes that fit between those areas, "I work my way backwards and forwards, asking myself, 'where should this or that scene fall in the plot?'"
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"A lot of people who want to be writers say they don't have time to write, but I think if you need to write, you find the time to write."
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John got involved with writing for ANGEL and Buffy by what he termed "leap frogging from one project to the next." His first taste at writing someone else's characters was with an unproduced spec Star Trek teleplay he had co-written. "I learned I could write other people's characters, which is a different type of writing than writing your own," he commented. Since it is such a different type of writing John noted that "there are great writers out there who might never be able to write a media tie in novel because they would want to make these characters their own instead of keeping them faithful to the show." However he did not think too much about writing a tie in novel until Wither won the Bram Stoker Award and one review said, "Wither hits the groove that makes TV's Buffy the Vampire Slayer such a kick." Through a writer acquaintance who had written Buffy novels, John learned the name of the Buffy editor at Pocket Books, Lisa Clancy. "I sent that Wither quote to Lisa and said 'I love the show. I got this quote [for Wither] and I'd like to try writing one of these novels. Could you send me the guidelines?'" So she told him he needed to write a ten to twelve page outline and a sample chapter to prove he could be faithful to the characters. "So at that point the only investment was writing the outline and sample chapter to send to Lisa Clancy. If she thinks it can work, she sends it to Fox for their approval. They might shoot it down because they are planning something similar for the show, or they don't agree with the concepts or planned character use," John explained. Fox accepted his story for the Buffy novel, Ghoul Trouble, asking only for minor changes. John had no problem with this because, "As a work-for-hire writer I accommodate those changes because the creative property and characters aren't mine. Nevertheless, I enjoy working with them," he admitted. When the ANGEL line started up Lisa contacted him and felt his style would be great for the series. At that point he was allowed to skip the sample chapter because, as he explained, "I had just come off the heels of doing the Buffy book which takes place in year three, so featured Angel and Cordelia. So two of the characters she already knew I could handle. It was just a question of capturing Doyle." Thus he arrived at the world of ANGEL and Avatar was born.
Wither
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As the Internet expands there has been a very real danger of Internet crimes. Because of the seeming anonymity of the Internet, people often let down their guard and become victims of stalking, or worse. This theme of Internet danger seen in Avatar is frighteningly real. John noted how he, "read stories about Internet predators preying on either young people or unsuspecting people, and I realized I worked with technology a lot in my professional career and also as a hobby with web design. So it was a desire to bring those things together, to actually write about the technology and tell a cautionary tale." By bringing the idea into the ANGEL universe where, as John said, "everyday dangers and menaces take on supernatural aspects", he added a sense of mysticism while retaining a very real message.
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