Dark Commando
Mel Odom on writing, media tie-ins, and undead Green Berets.
      by Tara O'Shea

Mel Odom lives a life fraught with danger. Fictional danger, that is. For the most part.

"I've been writing professionally for thirteen years. I sold my first book January the 8th. Elvis' birthday, 1988. I was so excited 'cause I got up the next morning and looked at myself in the mirror and thought I really was an author. Then I had an accident on the highway on the way to my Mom's house. It was a head-on collision. I bounced off the side of the road into a van. I got out of the car to check on my kids, 'cause the kids were very small at that time. The next thing I knew, I woke up in the middle of the street in a pool of blood and I thought, 'You know, I'm gonna die. That's really good. I sell my first book yesterday; I'm gonna die today.'"

Odom survived to write dozens of books, both media tie-ins, original novels, and video game strategy guides, as well as comics books and video games. On his plate currently is an original hard cover fantasy novel called The Rover as well as a short story for the new Thieves World anthology coming out, and the script for an upcoming Playstation 2 game called Alias Colonial Marines.

Odom has penned original adventures of Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Angel, Sabrina the Teenage Witch, Alex Mack, Young Hercules, and novelized such films as Blade, Vertical Limit, and the upcoming live-action Tomb Raider. But whether he's writing an original novel, or adapting a screenplay, his goal is always the same: to tell a good story. While the mainstream world may not appreciate the amount of talent and hard work that goes into media-tie in novels, the fans on the other hand cherish those authors who tell a good story about characters they know and love. Odom's first original Angel novel, Redemption, was embraced by fans, many of whom hail it as the best of the series and anxiously await his second novel, Bruja, due out in August. As much of a fan of the series as those who buy his books, he has a genuine love of the characters that is apparent in his work.

"I'm a writer who has been fortunate enough to be invited into these different worlds, and like these different worlds to where I can do the job capably. I've always thought of myself as a writer. Even when I go to media tie-in stuff, I try to find areas that I can write about -- things that I want to write about. In Blade, a lot of people really like the book because of the way I brought the characters to life. There's a lot of me in different parts and places. Just the way I look at things, the relationship issues, and things like that. What you should do. What you shouldn't do. I think of myself as a writer first, and I've been really fortunate to get invited in to all these different worlds."

Odom's latest venture into Buffy's universe is the original novel Revenant.

"Revenant right now is out -- my first big Buffy, which I believe is the longest Buffy written except for the trilogy that Chris Golden and Nancy Holder did. But it's the longest stand-alone, and it's going over really well. I've done five Sabrina novels, and I've been contracted for another one. I've got more fan mail over Sabrina, believe it or not, than I do Buffy."

Do you come to writing Young Adult novels with a different mindset than adult fiction?

"Basically, the YA stuff, I don't write beyond the kids. Sex is taboo, and really violent gory death is taboo because a lot of publishers are afraid of that. But the kids that are out there are all very familiar with violence. The YA Buffy that I did, Unnatural Selection, that I got a lot of fan mail on was the choreography of the fight scenes. Stuff like, 'I don't know if this guy really knows martial arts, or what, but his fight scenes, I'm right there with him!'

"When I first started writing the Sabrina novels -- there's a lot of action in the Sabrinas. Not fighting as much, but there's running and moving and things like that, and some of my editors have looked at my YA stuff when I first started out and going 'Hey, you're so descriptive with this stuff. Why are you doing that?' and 'It's not going to work.' And yet they keep coming back to me because the fans really like my work, and say things like 'I can see his book, it should be an episode of the show.' So I try to write very visually. Eighty percent of the people out there are visually oriented."

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