Interviews

Author JK Beck granted SciFiChick.com with an exclusive interview to talk about her current series – the Shadow Keepers!

Can you tell us a bit about the Shadow Keepers series?

Sure! The series is set in and around a paranormal judicial system that’s been in existence since pretty much the beginning of time. Nowadays, the system is hidden within our own judicial system. In the United States, for example, it’s a secret arm of Homeland Security, but the only humans who know its true purpose are those at the highest level of our government and the few select humans who work for the PEC (Paranormal Enforcement Coalition).

What is different about the Shadow Keepers series that sets it apart from the other urban fantasy/paranormal romance novels?

Well, obviously all books take the spin of their author, and that’s a uniqueness right there. As for these books, they’re very dark and gritty, and are peppered with paranormal characters with their own moral compass that may or may not be in alignment with how humans would perceive the world. The stories are also told from multiple points of view, which isn’t that unusual, but it’s a something I enjoy both as a reader and a writer!

How did your idea for the paranormal judicial system come about?

I don’t remember the exact aha! moment, but the fact that I love, love, love writing about paranormal stuff meshed fabulously with my background as a litigator. Once I had the idea, it was totally an “oh! Duh!” moment.

Your vampire/daemon idea is different from others as well. Do you feel like you need to break from that traditional vampire mythology when writing your stories?

No. I just write the story that I want to tell and to read. The daemon concept came about because I wanted more accountability, for lack of a better word. I’m a huge Buffy fan, but one thing that struck me early on (episode 2, I believe) was Giles telling Xander that his friend (Jesse?) was no longer Jesse. There was an external force—a demon—coming into the bodies and doing the vamp thing. I wanted to explore the concept of the darkness coming from within, not from the outside. Vamping flipping a switch, if you will, and turning up the evil.

Are there just the 3 planned for the series?

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SciFiChick.com was recently able to participate in a Q&A session with the creator and executive producer Tom Wheeler of NBC’s newest superhero vision – The Cape. The Cape premieres with a two-hour episode on Sunday, January 9th at 9pm EST with an encore broadcast the following Monday. Then, the regular time period will begin Monday, January 17th at 9 pm.

Could you tell us a bit about The Cape universe, some of the ideas behind it and how it will differ from other superhero shows?

Tom Wheeler: Sure I mean I think one of the kind of fun challenges of – I mean I’m a lifelong comic book fan. The idea of sort of writing my own comic was always really appealing, you know, writing any comic. I just – I’m just a fan of, you know, I just have always been sort of attracted to those stories.

The opportunity when I thought about writing the Cape it was – it came sort of in stages. I knew I wanted to write a story about a father and son and a father who takes on the persona of his son’s favorite comic book hero. But then it took a while for me to settle on who that hero should be.

And I also wanted it if I was going to write it for TV I really wanted to kind of wrap my arms around something that felt like its own comic book universe, still grounded and emotionally grounded and sort of high-stakes but I sort of wanted to create my own kind of playground.

So the idea of creating a fictional city seemed to fit in a sort of kind of silver age fashion just sort of create, you know, a hero with some silver age sensibilities for even though it’s set in the 21st Century and just larger than life characters but see if we could maintain a really sort of strong emotional thread throughout and kind of what’s some of the great character driven superhero stuff we’ve seen.

I knew I wanted costumes. I knew that would be a challenge. But I also feel that that sort of in a sense what embodies a superhero or at least the ones I grew up with.

And I’ve been sort of approaching it from a couple different places. I want it to have kind of a pulp sensibility. I wanted it to feel – I wanted Palm City to feel like it was – it had some timeless elements to it. The nightlife I wanted to feel sort of old Hollywood. I wanted there to be some – I didn’t – I wanted to have different – a feel of different worlds with in it and yet still be a relatable world.

So I think you’ll see kind of a mixture of both. But those were some of the – that was the genesis of some of it and how they ended up combining a little bit.

In looking at the longevity of the superhero-based series like The Cape, where does the focus need to be beyond superpowers and saving the day?

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Colin Morgan and Bradley James costar in Merlin, which returns for Season 3 on Friday, January 7th on the Syfy Channel.

How is the return of Morgana going to change things in Season 3?

Bradley James: All right. I’ll answer that. And whenever Morgana turns up in Series 3 there’s been a year-long search for her as decreed by Uther. And we don’t know where she’s been for that year. We don’t know what she’s been up to or what she’s been harvesting.

But it becomes very evident very quickly in the first episode that despite appearances she hasn’t changed. She’s just as evil as she was before if not more. And so it’s basically the beginnings within the first episode of where she’s going to go and what she’s going to create and what she’s going to change.

Can you tell us a bit about Season 3 and what we’re going to see?

Bradley James: Well I don’t think it’ll – I’ll get into too much trouble for this. But basically I think the thing I was most excited about with the third series is the introduction of certain characters who have a more longstanding place within the legend and the story and within the show for us because there’s one or two knights who turn up. And I was particularly sort of really pleased about that because it’s had a sort of aspect of developing the show as well which is a great thing about Season 3.

For people who may not have seen the show before, what can you tell us that separates this version of the story from all the others that have come before?

Bradley James: Well I would say that we’ve completely butchered the legend and sort of reworked it for sort of Saturday night escapism because anyone who’s kind of quite strictly religious to the legend perhaps will take a bit of time to get used to what we’ve done to it. But we – I think we’ve taken the legend and kind of – I mean the producers like to sort of compare it with the sort of Smallville idea of having Superman before he was Superman.

And I mean this is Merlin before he was Merlin and Arthur before he was King Arthur. So it’s kind of the prelude story to the familiar tale that everyone’s aware of.

Who do you consider the greatest enemy of Merlin: Morgause, Morgana or Uther?

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