Where did you come up with the idea for the Slayer?
I have never claimed it was a totally original idea. Like they say, there is nothing new under the sun, and the same holds true for Slayer. I wrote the first draft of Slayer after watching the cult anime film Vampire Hunter D on the Sci- Fi Channel. D is rather like Alek's father in that respect. I wanted to have a character similar to D, but one an American audience could jive on. Like you mentioned earlier, the characters Blade and Buffy had no influence at all on Alek. In fact, Alek predates the Nineties version of Blade (as opposed to the Seventies version which I know nothing about anyway) by years. And Buffy is good fun but never had any influence on Slayer at all. Slayer is much darker than that. My other influences include a lot of action films. I tend to see Alek as a mix down of Steven Segal, Jet Li and the late and wonderfully talented Brandan Lee. In fact, when I get ready to write a fight sequence, I usually watch one of their films and take notes. Some other influences include James O'Barr's The Crow, which just blew me away when I saw the film, and--probably oddest of all--Ray Harryhousen's excellent Clash of the Titans, my all-time favorite film. COTT got me into Greek mythos and the Medusa legend that had a big influence on Slayer. Amadeus's "hair trick" was a result of seeing that movie at the tender age of eight. Alek's "sentient coat" was my tip of the hat to typical and amusing Anime weirdness; having the Slayer wear a coat that seemed to have a life of its own is similar to the symbiot face that lives in D's left hand-- weird, but it makes sense in a hazy kind of way.
There is a Covenhouse RPG. How did that come about?
I did it on a whim. I had done some online RPGing for a while just to keep my writing skills up. It's a good exercise and it makes you write everyday, which is very important. Then I realized that a lot of RPGs seemed to be based on popular anime stories like VHD, Ghost in the Shell, and Voltron, and since
