From copy writing to vampire slaying

There's a bit way back in the first Buffy The Vampire Slayer episode that probably amuses Tracey Forbes more than the show's other writers.

That'd be when cutting Cordelia sized up fashion-challenged Willow with a withering query about her having discovered "the softer side of Sears."

Writing ad copy for that downmarket department store was Forbes' day job less than three years ago. Flyers, print ads, even in-store signs -- she applied her storytelling gifts to them all.

"For Mother's Day, 'My Mother, My Friend,' and then we'd type in the date. 'Mother's Day is May whatever.' Whatever big sale was on. Very soon it became unfulfilling," Forbes understates over the phone from L.A.

Now the 28-year-old Ryerson grad is the youngest of six staff writers on Buffy, the hit angst and action series.

"On Buffy, I'm the youngest by six years. When I told them how old I was -- they said, 'Tracey, how old are you?' and I said, 'Oh I'm 28' -- they said, 'Oh God! You're just a baby!' "

By most measures, she was also still a fairly green TV writer when she landed the Buffy job this spring.

She'd stayed with the Sears thing by day while freelancing scripts to Toronto-made kids series, including Big Comfy Couch, Hello Mrs. Cherrywinkle and Guess What? With an X-Files spec script about children bred to colonize Mars as her calling card, she landed a writing job on two seasons of PSI Factor: Chronicles Of The Paranormal here, then moved on to the unworthy Code Name: Eternity, an example of the mishmash that international co-production can wreak.

"They couldn't decide if (the main characters) were aliens at the outset, or not until halfway through. They couldn't decide on their basic agenda. We didn't know what the bad guys were doing. We didn't know what the good guys were doing. There were just so many different voices involved in the show. It's completely the opposite of Buffy where we have one man in charge of it (show creator Joss Whedon), it's his vision and it makes for a terrific show."

Her same X-Files script, shopped around L.A. by an agent, got Forbes 17 meetings with networks and producers when she visited for three days this spring. Ten days later, she could tell Code Name, as they say on Buffy, that she had An Elsewhere To Be. She gave notice, sold her condo, married her longtime boyfriend -- documentary video editor Chris Allen --loaded up the car and headed off for Bever-lee.

She still worries whether her drama background prepared her for Buffy's ample comedy, but judging by the plot for her first episode to air, tonight's Beer Bad, she's got a firm handle on the funny.

Buffy, smarting from being dumped by a jerk, is drowning her sorrows with a bunch of frat boys at the college pub where Zander is bartending.

"These guys are pretty, uh, they're kind of assholes," she says. "But she drinks with them, and the group, including Buffy, begin to revert mentally and physically into a Neanderthal state. But Zander cuts Buffy off halfway. She doesn't go all the way, but she gets to be Cave Buffy."

Forbes doesn't say that was actually inspired by any experiences back at Ry High's Oakham House, but you never know.

"We spend a lot of time in the (writers') room discussing real emotions, discussing things that have gone on in our own lives, what we can remember from college and exactly how we felt," she says. "You become very close to the people who you work with. You really do end up talking about all the pain that you've ever been through in very open and honest ways so that we can best portray that on the show."