Hanging with the Drew and Kickin’ the Crypt

Hi All!

Been doing a lot of writing and running around lately, so I’m late to the party, but here I am, pleased as punch to be contributing to the PC blog and looking forward to hearing from fans of Nancy Drew and Tales from the Crypt.

Co-writer Sarah already gave you a quick behind the scenes glimpse at the obsessive research we wind up doing for everyone’s favorite girl detective. Nancy is a beloved icon, one of (if not the) first icons of girl-power, and we take that heritage very seriously.

One of the challenges in writing for a character that’s been around since 1930 (and doesn’t look a day over sixteen!) is to keep things fresh. Between tigers, balloon races, sinking lakes, hidden cities, haunted forests and so on, I’m pleased to think we’ve managed to present a fun and interesting variety of plots and situations.

Sometimes, though, it’s equally fun to try to tackle a familiar situation in a new and exciting way. For instance, we’ve just started scripting our nineteenth graphic novel, Cliffhanger. Yes, yes, Nancy’s nearly fallen to her death many a-time, at old castles, cliffs, wells and sea-sides. This time, though, she’s desperately hanging by her fingers for the entire story, frantically searching her memory for clues about who pushed her in the first place! Sure it’s easy to solve a crime when you’re brilliant and standing on sold ground, but what if you’re dangling a few hundred yards over a rocky canyon and raging river? Not so easy then, eh?

On a more somber note, I also script for Tales from the Crypt and was particularly pleased that editor (and old pal) Jim Salicrup chose to run With Roses Bedight in the fourth collection Crypt-Keeping it Real. I originally wrote the story for Shooting Star Comics for editor Sean Taylor. Bedight had been kicking around in my head a while and it was very satisfying to finally commit it to paper. You never know what an artist will do with your work, but I was doubly pleased to see the terrific job newcomer Jeziel Sanchez did, his fine lines evoking a subtle creepiness that added layers of atmosphere to my little story. It just worked.

Sadly, Jeziel was killed by a hit and run driver, so we’ll never get to see what other wonderful work he might have done, so my third, and more melancholic, reason for being pleased is that Crypt provided a wider audience for this talented artist’s first and only published work.

That’s all from me for now. Sarah and I are always looking for new mysteries and situations to put Nancy through her paces. If you’ve got any ideas about what you’d like to see in the series, drop us a line. Don’t worry, she can take it!