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Bill Harp and Bob Locke Two Novels for AdultsI didn’t set out to write these novels—for adults, and therefore written under the name Robert Locke, not Clayton Bess—but I rather fell into them instead. The Blood Gospels began as a screenplay called “Blood”. (But have you ever tried to get anyone to take a vampire screenplay seriously?) I rewrote it as a novel for young adults, told from the point of view of the 14-year-old Angie. YA editors liked it but thought it was too sexy for young adults. And in fact, this made me realize that I was holding myself way back on the sexuality that I so naturally wanted to put into this story of sucking blood from other humans. So I finally rewrote it completely with a four-person narrative and changed the title to The Blood Gospels. With X Xx Zero, I was invited into co-writing the novel with my old friend Bill Harp, an embryologist by day and my best friend since 8th grade the rest of the time. He said, “Bob, I’ve got a premise for a novel, based upon In Vitro Fertilization, but I can’t think of any way to write it up without having a maniacal doctor as villain, and I don’t want to do that. You want to write it with me?” When he told me the premise, yes indeed, I did want to write it with him, and there are no maniacal doctors in X Xx Zero. 
Copyright © 2004 Robert Locke |