Why is Dragon's Blood such a departure from Slayer?
In terms of style, it's different--and better, I think--because I've evolved as an author. After all, close to seven years has passed since I penned Slayer. But as far as the story is concerned, I don't see that it is a departure. It's more a lull in the battle between Alek and the Coven. I had never planned on even writing it. I wanted to jump to Bloodlines and write about Amadeus's resurrection, because he's my favorite character in the series, then I got this idea for a novella from watching a taped version of MacGuyver, of all things. In this episode called "Runners" Mac runs into a prostitute named Jennifer who's new to the game but who wants to go home, except she can't because she has an abusive father she's afraid of. My mind automatically jumped to the plot of Dragon's Blood and things came together in a way I couldn't resist. I wanted to show that, much like Robyn in the story, Alek is also a "runner"--running from his past and running toward an uncertain future. He doesn't want to deal with the fact that a woman he loved many years ago is an old woman while he remains eternally young. He can face a bloodthirsty warrior out to harvest his head for the Coven, but the sight of a dying old woman makes him come undone. I liked the duality of his nature that way. Alek still has many tasks ahead of him: he still has to decipher the Chronicle and fight the Coven and its slayers, but I wanted him to take time out to show this vulnerable human side he has.
There are a lot of unanswered questions from the first book that aren't mentioned in the second, such as what was in the Ninth Chronicle? What is going on with the Catholic Church? What happened with Booker? When are we going to get answers to those questions?
The answers will come. I get a lot of complaints from fans that I don't address issues like that in the stories, and it's true. Writing for Alek is very difficult because as a character he tends to have a life all his own. He's a stubborn pain
