by Ramy Vance
Buffy saved my life. Twice.
I mean this as literally as one can when talking about a fictional character. The first time was when I was twenty-three and had just moved to Japan to teach English. You see, I had wanted to be a writer since I was eight, and I figured moving to the land of anime, samurais, and sushi would get my creative juices flowing.
It didn’t.
It seems that creativity doesn’t show up when you are alone in a small city where no one speaks your native tongue – in my case, English. And by no one, I mean, no one. And it didn’t help that my smattering of Japanese was relegated to basic phrases like “Where is the bathroom?” and “My name is Ramy.”
There are only so many times you can tell someone your name before they think you’re weird. And as for the bathroom, I’m pretty sure the whole town thought I had IBS.
As the weeks turned into months, I experienced a loneliness so deep that there were times I thought I would literally turn into a wisp of smoke to be carried away by the wind. If you’ve ever experienced true loneliness, then you’ll know what I mean. And if you haven’t, well, then I pray you never do. There are few emotions so completely soul-breaking…
I think I might have faded away into that wisp if it wasn’t for Buffy.
For some reason, local television played an episode of Buffy every Wednesday at 7:30pm. It was the only English I ever heard, and it became the one hour a week (well, forty minutes) where I could escape into a world that made sense (even when Darla was doing her thing). I built my week around that episode of Buffy, telling myself, “Only two more days until Buffy. Only one more day until Buffy…”
In between Buffy times, I would study Japanese, comforted that I would get that brief reprieve in the form of snarky dialogue and 90s-style choreographed TV fights. It gave me the strength to keep moving.
Eventually, my Japanese got better. Good enough that I actually started making friends, and even went on a date or two. And by the time I had completed my first year in Japan, I knew enough of the language and culture that I signed on for two more years.
Had it not been for Buffy, I would have quit after six months. Quit and missed out on some of the best times of my life.
Buffy saved my life. She gave me the strength to make it through that dark period in my life.
And she would save me again. Eleven years later, to be exact, when I’m living in Edinburgh, debating whether or not I should leave the company I started years earlier to pursue my dream of becoming a full-time author.
After all, it was what I had wanted since I was eight. And at (almost) thirty-eight, things hadn’t changed.
But what to write? I started with the GoneGod World, my first series, and it did OK, but I was so far from a full-time income that I was starting to regret my life choices. It didn’t help that my wife was pregnant (pregnant and still supportive, I might add. I married well. Very well, indeed.) But regardless of her patience, I needed to make money. Support my family.
Then, one evening, I was sipping some whisky (cliché, I know, but then again, what’s better than sipping good whisky in Scotland, eh?), and thinking back to Buffy and the parts of her story I loved most. Those pleasant memories led to these words: When I was dead, all I wanted to be was alive. Now that I’m human again, all I want to do is die.
And from those simple words, my second series, Mortality Bites, was born. It was the story of a three-hundred-year-old vampire who was suddenly made human again, mortal again…and the series explores all the struggles that came with that transformation (or untransformation, I guess).
Mortality Bites quickly rose in the ranks, making me the income I needed to truly become a full-time author. And now, eight books later (and Middang3ard rocking the charts), I have achieved the one thing I have wanted since I was eight years old. I had finally become that full-time author.
So, thank you, Buffy. Thank you, Joss Whedon, Sarah Michelle-Gellar, and the rest of the Scooby gang. I owe you all for saving my life more than once through your amazing stories. You saved me in the most peculiar of ways, and I honestly do not have the words to express my deepest gratitude.
But I’d like to try…so, if any of you are ever in Edinburgh, look me up. We can talk about how stories save people from themselves and transform lives in the most peculiar of ways.
We can do so while sipping whisky, clichés be damned.
Author Notes Michael Anderle
August 11, 2019
THANK YOU for not only reading this story but these Author Notes as well.
(I think I’ve been good with always opening with “thank you.” If not, I need to edit the other Author Notes!)
There is a huge challenge with this series. Well, a challenge other than Stew and Sandy and the Humpa Lumphad stuff – that is just so different on so many levels I can’t talk about it.
Well, not without laughing, at least.
Anyway, the challenge is the timeline between what I want to happen (the crew getting their rise in power and running across to save Beth) and how it would perhaps happen if we didn’t write the story to my personal preference.
Like, having others not understand we need a Rocky Balboa sort of ending. (You know, where we see Rocky working out in a montage of shots that represents weeks of effort and finally runs up the steps to raise his hands in the air?)
But, Humpa Lumphad aside, the truth is, Middang3ard isn’t a good place. Not everything goes to plan, and frankly, there is a LOT of ass-kicking that needs to be accomplished. Good people die, and often can die horribly and quickly.
Further, I’m wondering if we can drop a nuke in the world to destroy a metric shit-ton of orcs.
Or a MOAB (Mother of All Bombs).
The problem is air superiority. Who has it, and what do we do with it?
On to the next story – it’s time to get Beth back.
#BethBackNow
#DontForgetBeth
#StopPlayingWithHumpaLumphad
#HumpaLumphadArePeopleToo
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Michael Anderle
Other books by Ramy Vance
Mortality Bites Series
Keep Evolving Series
Fatebound Series
Books By Michael Anderle
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