In his first novel, Dark Origins, CSI creator Anthony E. Zuiker brought us a serial killer so extreme that he was the world's first to be deemed worthy of Level 26 status. The spree of diabolical crimes perpetrated by the latex-attired - and therefore forensic-proof -
Sqweegle, was ultimately halted by Steve Dark, a Special Circumstances investigator with demons of his own.
On October 14, Steve Dark returns in the second Level 26 installment, Dark Prophecy. Having left Special Circs at the end of the previous book, when Dark's destiny crosses paths with that of the Tarot Card Killer, he's forced to operate under the auspices of a far greyer area of the law.
In the same way that the psychopaths Dark hunts are no ordinary killers, the Level 26 books are no ordinary thrillers. Dubbed "digi-novels" by Zuiker, the multi-platform murder mysteries combine traditional text with web-based movie and community elements. We caught up with Zuiker ahead of Dark Prophecy's release to talk about the progression of Dark, and how, with the introduction of the iPad, the digi-novel has finally come of age.
Nicole Powers: Where did the idea for the character of Steve Dark come from?
Anthony E. Zuiker: There was a friend at Arizona State. He was a really, really good looking, lady killer type guy. Kind of stood out. I always remembered him. And then I began to want to create this character that spends his entire life chasing evil. Starting from NYPD cop and ending up in the CSI realm of Special Circs, which stands for Special Circumstances. They actually chase the worst of the worst criminals.
All the psychological turmoil that I personally go through, being involved in television - 'cause it's very tough to do this job, such high stress - I wanted to put a lot of that inside of the character of Steve Dark. The real guys that do Special Circs have really terrible jobs because they're handling the cases that CSI doesn't really handle, which is all the unspeakable crimes. During the course of him doing this job for 20 years, I wanted to see his level of growth and see him become self aware of who he is. Basically he's much like a werewolf. He cannot not solve crimes. He's destined to do this for a living for the rest of his life, regardless of all the consequences.
NP: So from a character point of view, Steve's political battles with the various law enforcement agencies are metaphorical for your battles with various elements within the TV companies you work with.
AZ: I think his psychological battles in doing a very tough job mimic the psychological battles of me doing a very tough job. I believe there's a lot of me inside that character which allows me to write dark when I want to write dark, to write heartfelt when I want to write heartfelt - to have that variance of emotions. I think all of those come out ultimately in the
Dark Prophecy movie, which is a one-hour feature on top of the narrative journey inside of
Dark Prophecy the crime novel.
NP: Obviously
Dark Prophecy is the follow up to
Dark Origins. Both are digi-novels, which bring other elements to the printed page. What made you want to go beyond the traditional book?
AZ: I'm an avid reader. I love crime novels. I respect the art of imagination. As an only child in Las Vegas, the imagination is what I relied upon to entertain me for all of those formative years. Since I have such an infatuation with technology, I wanted to find a way [to] write a book, write and direct a movie, and control and own a social community all wrapped in the same experience, so I can act as my own ownership entity.
That's where it all kind of began. I had the idea for the digi-novel, which allows you to read the book cover to cover - phase 1. Phase 2, read for 25 pages, [then] log into a website, enter a code, unlock a motion picture scene which bridges you from one chapter to another. Or, phase 3, be able to be intimately involved in a social community...
To find a way to aggregate a community that's a loyal fan base, and sell primarily to that community first and foremost before we even go to the world - that was the game plan. And it's working pretty magically so far, in terms of us having a worldwide bestseller for book one. We've made plenty of mistakes on the first book. On book two we have definitely refined those mistakes. I feel we finally have got it right. But even so, the digi-novel is a very clumsy experience in the book phase. Where we're really putting a lot of efforts into the iPad version of book two.
NP: That's what I was going to say, it'll be seamless as an iPad entity.
AZ: Yeah, when the press came back last year, it was a little ahead of it's time so they didn't quite know what to make of it. That's part of trailblazing, the good and the bad. What was really great was having people review it from an Apple position that said that the digi-novel was finally a digi-novel when it was launched on the
iPod Touch and the iPhone.
Now I'll go on record to say that reading a 400 page book on an iPod Touch, which is about 1500 flips of a finger, is a bit of a funky experience unless you have that kind of patience. But when the iPad came out, it sort of seamlessly linked up to the vision I have of the digi-novel, which is the ability to consume the book in three ways on the iPad. One, a la the kindle - I can barely say that in the same sentence as the iPad - where you can flip your finger and read the book straight away. Two, you're able to flip through the book and every 40 pages you're able to just press a button and watch what we call a cyber-bridge, right in front of you and then keep continuing to read without ever putting the book down and logging in. And, three, the most progressive version of digi-novel, which is reading the book, watching the bridges and also collecting evidence inside the read, pulsing words you can collect and put into an evidence bin.
NP: This book really highlights why, with a holistic approach like this, the Kindle is a bit last decade even.
AZ: Oh yeah, I have to be careful what I say here. Amazon has a big stake in Kindle. I will say that Kindle, what it did do successfully in terms of my world is really tell the consumer that's it's okay to consume an e-book on a tablet. And you can carry multiple books around without having to shove all these books in your purse. I think that's a good thing. But, the visual possibilities in terms of the apparatus are so vast for a creator like me that it inspires me to push the digi-novel into the next revolution, which is being able to consume different levels of engagement, which is really the goal from the very beginning. I just didn't want to take a book out of people's hands from the jump.
NP: You talk about how you learned from the mistakes of
Dark Origins. For people that read the first book, and maybe did find the experience a little clunky, what have you been able to iron out with the second? Why should people give your digi-novel another shot?
AZ: This is a great question and I'd love to address it. When you're doing something brand new, all you can do is really rely on your instincts and go for it, whether you succeed or fail. Nothing makes you better more than failure, because you're on the road to fixing [things].
The cover of the book was black and very masculine. That might've turned some folks off. It was very untraditional. It was very graphic novel-y, so to speak. That didn't help things. The cyber-bridges, the first one was entitled "Snuff" and it had a woman in a bondage situation with our friend the killer wielding a knife. It probably turned women off - big time. The book was very sexually deviant and it was very dark.
CSI fans that were used to more commercial content were sort of like, "Whoa, this really isn't for me."
I was just going on raw gut there. After the book came out, you know, it's done very well - it's not
Dragon Tattoo by any stretch - but it did set a mark. But we didn't sell a hundred thousand units. So I sat back and said, okay, well what can we do to improve? People, they were reading the book from cover to cover, but not really logging in to watch the interstitials. That kind of got in the way. It got a little clunky.
So for this book,
Dark Prophecy, we started completely from scratch. We have a much more commercial cover. This is much more of a psychological thriller. It's not sexually deviant. It's not overly violent. It's still very engaging. It also takes the position of launching our Steve Dark hero. Because book one was very villain centric; Book two is very hero centric. And instead of doing 20 out of context interstitial cyber-bridges, we have written a really, really great classic psychological thriller. But we also have this one-hour movie as a side storyline that doesn't interfere or conflict with the book. That's the big success that we've done.
NP: I know links to the cyber-bridges are interspersed between the chapters, but can you watch them from start to finish as a movie?
AZ: You cannot do that in the book phase unless you flip through the book and enter all the codes to watch those. It will be available on iTunes for $6 to watch the movie, top to bottom a la Joss Whedon's
Sing-Along Blog. We have the same monetization model. Once you buy the iPad app and you flip through the appropriate pages and unlock all the bridges, there will be a mechanism where you watch the movie straight through. But we don't have that mechanism in the book phase because we still are trying to teach people how to consume the digi-novel properly.
NP: When I'm reading at night, my computer's in the other room, and I don't want to have to get up. So when I was reading the book, I was wanting to consume the bridges at least a few at a time the next morning.
AZ: You certainly can. As long as you are patient enough to search for the chapter codes, you can watch the whole movie. If you wrote the codes down and you sat in front of your computer, you could watch the whole movie from top to bottom.
NP: This, like your other book is very forensic-centric. You obviously have a background in forensics, but how do you keep tabs on the latest developments?
AZ: Well I am back on
CSI full time this year, so I have a plethora of information at my fingertips in terms of the latest in forensic technologies. Now, we didn't overly forensicate, so to speak, this book because we were really focused on the psychological journey of Steve Dark. We do have some forensic twists and turns in the book. But in terms of the meat and potatoes of the narrative, it really comes down to the interpretation of these tarot cards. Not only is the killer leaving tarot cards at crime scenes, and connecting all of the victims to send a profound message, but when you watch the one-hour movie, the cards that are dealt out by Justine Bateman, who plays Hilda, are dealt out in the same exact order when you watch the movie as his personal journey, which thematically is emblematic of the killer's journey in the book. So hangmen, the fool, three of cups - it's all the same order for the movie, for personal, and for the narrative of the book.
NP: On the Special Circs side of things, do you have advisors in the field that you work with?
AZ: Special Circs really is as dark as you can imagine. In terms of inventing things that are dark and nasty, I pretty much have that covered in my brain. I also have access to a lot of crimes that aren't public, that are very, very scary too. But I have to stress that the Special Circs part of the dark deviance is not really a part of this book.
We definitely got away from all of that because it was just too much to digest in a crime novel. But I have access to a lot of information just because I'm on the show every day. I'm talking with real law officers and retired CSIs in the writers' room that share stories that they've heard from law enforcement. I'm probably the most paranoid man in Los Angeles at this point.
NP: I'm was talking to
Janeane Garofalo. She's in a new crime series with Forest Whitaker, and she had an interesting theory as to why procedurals are one of the most popular types of drama on television. She says we like to "imagine that there is a fully functioning and honest judicial system" and it's comforting for us to think that when people do wrong they get their comeuppance.
AZ: I think a lot of that is also in other kinds if serialized TV shows too, so I'm not sure if that's specific to procedural. As we found at CBS from
CSI, the simple fact is that when you write compelling characters that are trying to right the wrongs, and bring peace of mind and justice to the survivors on the worst day of their lives...that audiences all around the world respond greatly to those kinds of shows.
Especially our audience. The average mean of our audience is 52-years old. Excuse me, they just announced 51-years old so we got a year younger here at CBS. But that audience in particular likes morally righteous people, working hard, bringing down bad, doing good, and caring for each other. And having a satisfactory ending to the case is something that does very well at this network.
NP: Where does your personal love for the genre come from?
AZ: Boy, that's a tough one. I think that as a young child that was rather high functioning, incredibly misunderstood, alone in his childhood as an only child in a very adult town of Las Vegas [can be]. Me being home from 3 o'clock in the afternoon until 11 o'clock at night, every day, allowed me a lot of time to think and romance [about] movies and television, things that I liked. I feel that there's a large part of justice and satisfaction that comes from creating and writing shows like this. From being a misunderstood child that was not out chasing girls, or not out buying new cars, or not doing the normal things kids do. I was reading, or creating, or drawing, or making board games, or rolling dice, or writing speeches, or reading philosophy books - just things that normal young kids didn't really do. I was made fun of for doing that and not taken seriously, and it just gave me the ambition to put some of that frustration into being creative, and therefore a lot of these great shows are born.
NP: What shows inspired you growing up?
AZ: I loved television growing up. I would watch
Adam 12,
Quincy - obviously -
Three's Company,
Twilight Zone. I had many shows that I would watch over and over and over again and get great pleasure. I think a lot of that had to do with me being in the business. I never aspired to be in the business but I was always a writer. I always found myself wanting to write the movies that I grew up with:
Kramer vs. Kramer,
Jaws,
The Graduate,
The Godfather,
Love Story. Those are the kinds of movies that I really enjoyed. I try to capture the essence of that kind of drama when I write these shows.
NP: Talking of movies, I was reading this book, and the pace and the tone, especially when it builds to a crescendo at the end, it's crying out to be a movie. Is that a thought down the line?
AZ: Honestly, that thought had not really crossed my mind for this particular book. I can see how it could be constructed as a movie, but I really think the honest answer is that we were so conscious about making sure that we wrote a great book and we got everything right this time. I mean, by no means have we licked it, but we feel like we're in the right direction and we want to make sure that the one-hour movie is engaging. We definitely have done that. The movie is really, really great. And we want to make sure that the book hits on all cylinders in terms of being a commercial thriller that felt really Zuiker. We feel we've done that.
Then reworking the website so that it feels much more navigationally friendly and much more appealing to book readers, and not so dark and deviant. We reskinned that. Now we feel like we're in a good position to win, and because I'm fortunate enough to have the pleasure of taking my villain out of book one and putting that villain,
Black Sqweegel, on to CSI, starring Ann Margaret in that particular episode, and then have the story line continue in
Dark Prophecy when the book and the show drops the same day, is really an excellent cross platform experiment in the best way to push the book and the best way to get fans to try
CSI.
NP: When's that
CSI episode air?
AZ: October 14th at 9 o'clock local time. It will feature Sqweegel in the black-legged catsuit, which is how book one ends. Then the journey will continue in
Dark Prophecy, which will be in stores nationwide the very same day, October 14th.
NP: All worlds collide on October the 14th.
AZ: Yeah. I think it's the first time that a creator has created a show, created a book, taken a villain out of a book, put it on his own show, and then continued it in a book. I think that's the first time this has really ever happened on television.
NP: And people have direct access to you through
Level26.com - that's fairly unique too. How much time do you spend on there?
AZ: I check it every day. I answer all the direct mail myself. We have a small staff here that launches blogs once a week. We try to go daily, but it's very, very tough based on me being on
CSI full time, developing new TV shows, launching books and movies, and [having a] speaking career with three kids and a wife. It's a little tough. I try to give them as much access as I can. I will reach out to them in Facebook, sometimes Twitter. I'll respond to every message. I have a pretty close relationship with the community. It got a little rocky after a while because it was just an onslaught of everybody coming to the party, but it settled down. Now that we're relaunching and we're reskinning and our clientele is much more reader-based, I think we're in line to build a fruitful community...The great thing about websites is you can always build them brick by brick over the course of time. You're not just assuming you've got to build Saddam's castle out of the gate. So we're definitely laying a more solid foundation in terms of our site.
NP: Finally,
you sent me some clues for an ancillary game. Is that something that I can share with the SuicideGirls community?
AZ: Absolutely. We sent different cards to different people, and we're hoping that there's a lot of cross figuring out that will all lead to one crescendo prize at the end. I know
Dread Central got this mysterious package and promoted it. Now people are trying to figure out the clues inside of that.
NP: Do you have any tips for members of the SuicideGirls community who want to join in and follow the clues?
AZ: I think the tips are to be thinking about other sites like Dread Central and
CSIFiles.com. I think reaching out to those other sites and saying, "Hey we hear you've got a tarot card." Everybody had different cards, and as we're able to communicate and try to figure that out, people will end up licking that puzzle and getting some kind of cool surprise.
NP: That sounds very intriguing.
AZ: I have my internet guru here. He's hiding from me because it's all supposed to be top secret.
NP: So we have some top secret information do we?
AZ: Yeah. We've also launched a teaser on
YouTube, and we're launching one cyber-bridge a day, counting down until October 14th so people will be able to watch the movie for free once a day. And
Level 26 has a lot of hidden content in there too, so that's kind of neat...The buzz has been great so far, so we're pretty happy.
Every chance I get. My libido is bigger than my brain. I prefer to have a sex life, but I currently don't. 
lady).... 
