By Louis Peitzman
Though she’s probably best known for playing Tara on Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Amber Benson has kept busy since her three-season stint on the series. A screenwriter, director, and author, she recently released her first solo novel. The first in a trilogy, Death’s Daughter follows Calliope Reaper-Jones as she’s forced to take over for her father (that would be Death) while trying to locate his whereabouts. I spoke to Amber about the origins of the story, her mythologist ambitions, and the future of the series.
San Francisco Bay Guardian: My first question is sort of the obvious one — where did these ideas come from?
Amber Benson: You know, I hadn’t really read a lot of paranormal romance, and then I read Charlaine Harris’ Sookie Stackhouse series, and I was like, this is an awesome genre. I really like it, the paranormal romance-slash-urban fantasy world. And I thought I’d like to try something in that vein. Until then, I’d written mostly horror with a Victorian slant to it, so I started just trying to come up with ideas for something in that genre. And then I was like, well, I love mythology, I love American Gods by Neil Gaiman. Maybe there’s a way to incorporate this mythological sort of context to the paranormal romance. That’s when I came up with the idea of Death’s Daughter. What would happen if death was run like a corporation, and the daughter of Death had to come and take it over because her dad was missing, and she didn’t want any part of it? I guess that’s where the idea came from: working all these things that I liked into a genre I was curious about.
SFBG: So did you end up doing any research, or was this all mythology you were already familiar with?