James Christie

Born in England in 1964, James Christie graduated from college with a degree in creative writing as well as College Colours "in recognition of outstanding service to the student body and the college community". After travelling around Australia for a year, he went to library school in 1992, catalogued the private library collection of a stately home and worked as a law librarian in Glasgow. He was diagnosed with Asperger Syndrome in 2002 and shortly thereafter began to take a focused interest in Drusilla, a character in the cult TV series Buffy the Vampire Slayer. He wrote a quartet of fan-fiction stories (Drusilla’s Roses, Drusilla’s Redemption, Drusilla Revenant and Spike & Dru : the Graveyard of Empires) which further developed the character of Drusilla, sent them to Juliet Landau (the actress who'd portrayed Dru) and impressed her so much they commenced an email correspondence. In 2010, James took a historic Buffy-themed Greyhound bus trip across America with the support of the National Autistic Society Scotland in order to meet his dear Miss Landau... The story of the journey, Dear Miss Landau, which also described his difficulties living as an autistic adult in a neuro-typical world, was published by Chaplin Books in 2012. Reviewing Dear Miss Landau on BBC Radio 4’s A Good Read, Tim Coates (former managing director of WH Smith and Waterstones) said: “This is the best book I’ve read for ten years.” And a stage musical inspired by Dear Miss Landau is currently in development. In 2015, The Legend of John Macnab, the "Great Scottish Novel" James had spent over twenty years working on, and which centred on a Scots icon more splendid than the Stone of Destiny, was also published. He may have rewritten Scottish history in two places, and it is indeed the first commercial novel to publicize the Book of Deer. Apart from blogging for the Huffington Post UK, James recently published an ebook anthology of his articles called Differently Wired.