Rebecca Dessertine, author of the latest Supernatural tie-in novel, One Year Gone, talks to Digital Airwaves about her experiences writing the novel and working as an assistant to Eric Kripke on the show.

The book takes place in the year between the end of season 5, when Sam falls into Hell, and the beginning of season 6 when he returns. The Amazon description reads:

Dean believes that Sam is in Hell so he is trying to keep his promise to his brother and live a normal life with Lisa and Ben. When he realizes that a spell in the Necronomicon could raise Lucifer and therefore Sam, he convinces his new family to travel with him on vacation to Salem. Meanwhile Sam is not as far away as Dean thinks and is determined to protect his brother from the Salem witches…

Talking about trying to stay true to the canon of the series, Dessertine says:

You just have to respect everything. You don’t want to change anything. That’s the show’s job. What you want to do with the novel is just add a little bit for the fans.

Other questions asked include:

What made you want to tell this particular story?

I knew coming back last year, between season five and season six, that we were going to be jumping ahead a year. Depending on what the show was going to cover, I knew that I could explore that year a little more in depth, and not come up with a monster of the week the show would maybe wanna do, and end up going over it. It was going to be a fun and important place to start. As we went through the season, we saw some flashbacks but we didn’t get to see a lot, so I sort of wanted to explore the characters.

Supernatural fans are an incredibly passionate group of people. Did you feel any pressure as far as delivering to the fans? Is there anything specific you want them to take away from the novel?

It’s like, when you’re writing, you take it into account and you don’t. You want to stay true to yourself and your writing, and you want to make everyone happy, too. You just keep writing. It doesn’t make much sense to make any tie-in canon, because you’re not dealing with the same set of people. It’s marketing rather than studio. The novels and all sort of spin-off material is just for the fan to want to read something different, and if you like it, we’re super-happy.

Read the full interview here at Digital Airwaves!