Theresa Meyers Talks About Her Favorite Episode of Season Six

In lieu of our normal Monday news, I'm delighted to host author Theresa Meyers today. She's a great fan of Supernatural, and her upcoming book, The Hunter, is inspired by our favorite show. If I hadn't already decided to buy this book the moment Theresa told me about the premise, I'd be buying it based on the cover alone! Take it away, Theresa...

Okay, I don’t know about you, but I’m a bit of a Supernatural nut. In fact my best friend (who is also addicted to the show) and I get along for the simple reason that she’s a Sam girl and I’m a Dean girl, so we don’t have to fight each other over the same Winchester when we’re watching the show together. Sometimes Supernatural is what gets me through a week of tough writing on the novel in progress.

One of my favorite episodes from this season had to be "Frontierland," not because it was the best written show of the season, but because it touched on some back story of Dean we’d never seen before – his love of all things western.

I know that in an earlier outtake interview (was it season 3?) Kripke talks about how he’d like to do something back in the Old West revolving around Samuel Colt. I think this was their shot at the idea. Did I love the whole idea of the Phoenix being a man that couldn’t die? Oh yeah! That was brilliant.

I also liked how Dean was almost *squee-fan-girl* over the whole chance to go to the Old West, but when he gets there it’s not nearly as romantic as it seemed. (Witness the whiskey that tastes like gasoline and the diseased saloon girl who freaked him out.) And in contrast Sam was totally out of his element (going so far as to try as scrape horse poo of his shoe and carry about his cell phone for comfort.)

Putting Samuel Colt and Elkins in there was a fantastic means to integrate the back story of the revolver (which is almost a character itself in some seasons) with the current hunt the boys are on, and I really liked how they discovered the journal in the Campbell family vault of hunter knowledge. The only thing that would have made the episode better for me was if Dean had gotten to collect the ashes of the Phoenix himself rather than having it all tied in a neat “back-to-the-Future-3” style bow where the ashes miraculously appear just on the right day and the right time after they’ve returned home from their visit to the wild west.

Another reason I loved the episode was because I wanted to see how close it came to the book I just finished writing that comes out in November. The Hunter, which is steampunk and best described as Supernatural meets Wild Wild West with a little bit of Indiana Jones for flavoring, features three brothers all out to unite the Book of Legend, which is kind of the compendium of Hunter knowledge and can help protect against the Gates of Nyx opening and letting all the Darkin into the world (think purgatory and Hell combined). Truth was, while my three brothers hunt down Darkin, they really don’t have anything close to the abundance of resources the Winchesters have. Sure they’ve got cooler steampunk weapons and the hero has a mechanical horse instead of a throaty muscle car, but overall, their world is just a little bit different because the society I’ve created is a little bit different because of the more advanced steam-powered technology. The Supernatural episode was gritty, real west, which I could appreciate. My stories have just a shade more sci-fi and romance.

Sure there were other episodes that were better written than "Frontierland," and certainly those that gave us more eye-candy than others (Souless!Sam, I’m looking at you). But overall, after so many shows in several seasons, it was nice to see a little glimpse of the characters that we didn’t know. Those little nuggets of surprise are part of what keep me addicted to the show—okay, well that and my absolute adoration of Jensen Ackles as Dean Winchester.

So, in looking back at season six, what was your favorite episode?

Blending Bad Boys, Westerns and Supernatural into Steampunk

Today, I'm happy to host guest blogger Theresa Meyers. When I heard about her exciting new series and her love for Supernatural, I knew she'd be a great person to come by and share the love for our favorite show.

You know how they say write what you love? But what if what you love is a whole bunch of different things? So what’s a writer to do? Write it anyway!

I love writing paranormals for Harlequin’s Nocturne line and admit to being a total squee-girl fan of the television show Supernatural (in fact, Jensen Ackles aka Dean, if you are reading this, can we talk? I’d love for you to play one of the brothers in my books if they ever go to the big screen). I love history, and in particular I’m a bit of a Victorian nut, so I write historicals. I’ll admit to being partial to the American West simply because I’ve been a West Coast girl all my life, living in California, Oregon, Washington and Arizona, all for different periods of my life. Now normally you’d think there was no way to blend all of that together, but guess what—there is.

Case in point is the new series I’m currently writing for Kensington that won’t come out until 2011 with the first book, The Hunter. It’s a Steampunk trilogy featuring three brothers named after their father’s favorite guns in the Weird Wild West who hunt down supernatural beings along with help from their slightly mad British inventor friend Marley to protect mankind. From skinwalkers and demons to vampires and shape-shifters, they hunt them all, as they work to find the missing pieces of The Book of Legend, the compendium of all Hunter knowledge.

I originally had the idea for the brothers decades ago. I knew who they were, but I didn’t realize this whole other side of them until I was watching the outtake interviews on one of my seasons disks of Supernatural where one of the writers for the show was talking about how he’d always thought it would be cool if they could have gone back in the series to the Wild West. Seen what it was like for Hunters in history. That got me thinking. Who were the Hunters in history, where did they come from? How do they know what they know and train one another? I mean really, you know there’s got to be more to it than what you seen on the screen. Every good character has a history.

That’s when it hit me. My Jackson brothers were Hunters. That was the thing that held these three very different men together. From there I created a whole history and world that stretches back to the dark ages where the Book of Legend was torn apart and scattered to protect it so that Hunters might learn portions of what they needed to know but would have to find one another to truly understand it all.

Winchester, Remington and Colt all have different approaches to being part of their Hunter legacy. Colt (my hero in The Hunter) is a bit of a bad boy, gambler/gunslinger who really, really likes women. He’s the baby and has the whole “Go hard or go home” mentality to him. Which makes things really interesting when he needs the help of a demon to unlock the hiding place of the piece of the Book of Legend he’s searching for. Nothing like a succubus to keep a womanizing bad boy on his toes!

Oldest brother Winchester has sworn off hunting and become a lawman in the Wild West. But that doesn’t mean the supernatural baddies out there have forgotten who he is or where he came from. As the Gates of Nyx threaten to open, letting the Darkin out into the world, he knows he’s going to have to help his brothers out, even if it means going back into hunting. He’s got to accept the help of a vampire countess to track down the second piece of the book.

Middle brother Remington likes to straddle both sides of the law as an attorney. He’s my half-and-half brother, able to understand both his brothers' philosophies. Remington can just about talk his way out of (or into) anything. But when it all boils down to finding the last piece of the Book of Legend, a shape-shifter thief is going to take him into situations that’ll leave him speechless.

Now, you’re probably scratching your head saying, hey wait, these just kind of sound like western-set paranormals. What’s that got to do with steampunk? My version of their world is just a little bit different than you’d read in your average western. For example, when the vampire countess comes calling, she has an airship to take them back to Europe on the journey to retrieve the segment of the book. Colt has a faithful mechanical horse, named Tempus, whose clockworks make him very reliable in the unrelenting travel in the western frontier. And remember that inventor friend I mentioned? He gives the boys all kinds of fun experimental weapons (and where, exactly did you think the demon-killing Colt gun came from in the first place?).

The best way to understand steampunk is to know that the steam refers to the steam age, Victorian era. The story can be set anywhere in the world (or in a parallel world for that matter) during that time when combustion engines weren’t the norm and steam ruled as a power source. The Punk of steampunk comes when you adapt the world to fit your vision of it. Girls as airship captains, inventions that can bore into the earth, search the bottom of the seas, zap holes through a vampire at twenty paces, mad inventors, intrepid adventurers and explorers. You get the idea.

So there you have it. A way to blend an unnatural obsession with Supernatural into historical, steampunk, paranormal romance. Sweet, huh? I can’t wait.

I can't wait either! I think this series sounds amazing, and I'll be there at the bookstore when The Hunter hits the shelves. Thanks for being with us today, Theresa. So, everyone, have questions for Theresa? Do you think this series sounds as awesome as I do? Until the series' release, be sure to check out Theresa's other stories for Nocturne Bites.