There’s been a lot of debate about the popularity of serial killer Dexter, but who better to get the full lowdown from than the creator of the books the show’s based around, author Jeff Lindsay? Here’s what he has to say about the character everyone’s talking about.

Jeff, you said you served 12 years in Hollywood was that as a writer?
(Laughs) Partly! I served as a writer and a director and a play writer and an actor and a comic and I did improv-comedy and at this point my future wife came out and said to me ‘you know, you’d be really good if you just do one thing.’ So I stopped doing all the rest of it and just wrote and at that, good things started to happen so I guess she was right.

Was that solely novels or were you working on screen plays?
No, it was screen plays and plays, I was running a theatre company at the time. Co-running it and I wrote plays that the company did and I wrote television sitcoms and films and also I was writing songs for the band I was with.

Do you feel that writing scripts has helped the novel writing at all?
I think so. The people who read the first book told me they thought it was very visual, that they could see not just the characters but the actions, and I think that was part of the function of writing dramatic literature for so long.

Do you think the Dexter books you’re writing now are influenced by the television series?
People have been asking that question since the television series started and I’ve always been saying no, no, no, never, never, never. It’s all here (points to brain), the TV show’s over there, and just recently as I’m finishing off book 4, little things - its never Dexter who’s different but Masuko… when I’m writing a scene with him in it, now all of a sudden the TV character is coming out and its very different from the way it’s written in the books.

The Carmen and Miranda costume is just one side of it and all of a sudden his voice is here and I have to go you know ‘go away, get out come on get outta here.’ But so far Dexter in my head as I’m writing has stayed separate from Dexter as done by Michael C. Hall. I think he’s doing a fantastic job. Well it is, you know, slightly different - it would have to be just by being in a different media.

Do Showtime give you any control over the TV series?
Oh My God no! [The old joke in Hollywood] is that writers are not permitted on the set unless accompanied by an adult and Showtime is no exception. Showtime loves me, I know that. Just as an example, when I get home from visiting here, they’re flying me first class to New York for an award ceremony, and they don’t have to do it first class. They’re putting me up in the Waldolf Astoria Hotel which has a big casino I’m assuming you’ve even heard of here, so I know they love me - but they don’t ask my permission. They paid well for the privilege of doing whatever they want and so far I think they’ve done a wonderful job.

For main characters to be compelling audiences expect some emotional development, but with Dexter’s particular character obviously that kind of natural art will be very difficult. So how do you see the series progressing while keeping him compelling in that area? Where do you see his long term story going?
This is one of the areas where the program and the books get very different because as you said audiences want to see a development in the characters when they’re watching the programme but as I found out with book 3, Dexter in the Dark, audiences want him to stay the same in the books and develop a little bit each season on television so it’s a very difficult question believe it or not.

In the books he’ll change a little bit - for example he’s gotten married now, but he’s going to stay the same character. I’m not going to put him through huge personality changes. It might be possible you’ll see in season 2 a gasp of it but that’s not going to happen to such a marked extent in the books.

In the book, one of the reasons why Dexter gets married is because he sees in Rita’s children the beginnings of his own dark passage and feels he could help foster them and train them in the way that his father trained him. That’s not something that’s really coming through in the TV series - is that because we don’t like seeing evil children on TV?
I’m assuming this is a rather television savvy audience so I’m telling you no secrets when I say that TV is terrified of that, they don’t know what to do with it and they’ve told me privately too they wish that I would lay off but I feel its something I need to do in the books.

If you stop writing books and they wanted to continue a series, would they have control to do that?
That’s entirely up to my agent and their lawyers. I think as long as my agent is happy, I’m happy.