TVSquad Talks To Rebecca Dessertine about her Novel "Supernatural: One Year Gone"

[JamesG]

EXCLUSIVE: "Supernatural" Fan Fills in the Missing Year With New Book
by Allison Waldman
posted May 24th 2011


If you're like most fans of "Supernatural", you want more than what you've seen on screen.

More Sam and Dean Winchester! More things that go bump in the night! More monsters and hunting and ... well, "Supernatural".





Here's your chance to fill that void. With the approval of creator Eric Kripke, author Rebecca Dessertine has written a new novel that's an exciting original story about Sam and Dean, but also provides a valuable service.

Supernatural: One Year Gone fills in the gaps in the TV show's timeline by telling us what we missed in that year-ahead jump from Season 5 to Season 6.




AOL TV talked to Rebecca Dessertine (fun fact: she's actually Kripke's assistant by day) about her experience writing the novel, which is arriving in stores today (May 24).






How did you get the opportunity to write the novel, and what were your goals in writing it?

With this novel my goal was simply to make it good and illuminate more of the characters which we all love so much.

How did this opportunity fall in my lap? Like anything good I had to beg for it. Since I'm in the enviable position of being Eric Kripke's assistant I had the opportunity to get his approval. I timidly knocked on his door, stepped in and started blabbing, then maybe got to the point like five minutes later.

Kidding. Sort of. In any case, he said "go for it."











Why should fans be excited about the novel?

When Season 6 started, I knew we'd be skipping ahead a year, and I thought it would be cool to experience that lost year since we weren't going to see too much of it in the show.

The hook is that we really get into Dean and Sam's individual heads while they are separated; Dean is with Lisa and Ben, and Sam is with Samuel and his hunting family. I wanted to know what was really going on with them -- what they were feeling?

But of course we know Sam wasn't feeling much of anything.











What inspired the story you came up with for Sam and Dean?

Well, I have this sort of weird obsession with not believing things I'm told. I guess I believe in a series of conspiracy theories, but also I want to formulate my own opinions and I have a natural tendency to question everything, even authority.

All those things combined led me to thinking about the Salem Witch Trials and everything that happened there, where innocent people were put to death ... terrible, terrible things.





And I read why people thought it happened: mass delusions, teenage sexual repression, even poisoning from the winter's grain crop. That's what most people think caused the hysteria.

But what if they are wrong, and there were witches in Salem. What would happen then? That was my jumping off point, and then I had to tie Sam and Dean into it.

Since we've established a long blood line of hunters I thought it would be cool if the Campbell family stretched back all the way to colonial times.











Was the "Supernatural" mythology a help in building your creation?

The mythology helped with creating the bloodline of hunters to 1692 Salem, Massachusetts, and I built off of that. And then, of course, our monsters work in different ways than in some shows ... we try to stay as true to the real legends as possible.

When I settled on Salem and the witch trials I tried to figure out how our witches would try to command power.











Would you like to do more novels in the future?

I would love to write more novels above and beyond the "Supernatural" novels. I'm working on something right now, it's based on my experiences at a private school in one of the most haunted counties in America.

But I can't say much more than that.











What's the reaction been like from Eric and others involved in the show?

Well while I was writing, every once and a while I checked in with Eric and [showrunner] Sera Gamble, asking if I could include something in the novel.

Initially they approved the idea and then they left me to my own devices -- may the fates be on my side. So I have yet to get a reaction from them.

http://www.tvsquad.com/2011/05/24/ex...rview-excerpt/