(I’m still not sure where the “half-assed” joke will come in yet. I may have to write for this character for a few more chapters before I find the spot.)
BTW, Paul. Since you never mentioned Jack’s last name, I’m just going to give him the surname “Snortkowski.” Also, in this scene, he gets his pelvis chewed off. You’re gonna have to retrofit that into your series.
Joe
• • •
Don’t lie, Mr. Liar McLyingpants.
The Draculas scene from Banana Hammock by J.A. Konrath went like this:
Mortimer rolled on top of her, like a lover, blood and saliva dripping onto Jenny’s face and neck. She reached up to push him away, but even as terror-stricken as she was, Jenny couldn’t bring herself to touch him. It was like willingly sticking your hand into a box of angry rattlesnakes. Even as his jaws drew near, Jenny’s revulsion wouldn’t allow her to fight back. She stretched out her hand—her face imploring—to Dr. Lanz, who stood within reach. But he shrank away from her beckoning fingers, retreating into the safety of the nurse’s station.
This is it, Jenny thought. I’m going to die.
“Cool,” Crazy Knife Goon said.
Harry McGlade nodded. “Draculas is a real roller coaster ride. Soon the whole hospital is overrun, with a few remaining survivors fighting for their lives.”
“Which parts did Jeff Strand write?” Andrew Mayhem asked.
McGlade gave CKG a knowing nod, and then they both shoved Mayhem at the creature, who tore into Mayhem’s throat like a fatty ripping open a bag of potato chips, except blood came out, not chips, and it wasn’t a fatty, it was a dracula. There was babyish squealing and some unmanly cries for help from Mayhem, who was probably a bed wetter, and then the dracula ate him all up and everyone gave each other high-fives.
Also, despite the very reasonable $2.99 Kindle price, Draculas never sold a single copy, so Strand never got any royalties.
Joe
• • •
I was too distracted by the desecration of Winnie the Pooh.
Jeff
• • •
That wasn’t desecration. That was parody, which is protected by fair use, and I never mentioned that beloved childhood copyrighted character by name so it isn’t infringement.
Joe
• • •
If McGlade shows up in this I fucking quit.
Blake
• • •
But I still get paid of course, it’s a symbolic quitting.
Blake
• • •
You just lost yourself a Camaro, Mr. McCritical.
I think you’re still sore because anytime someone mentions “Blake Crouch” in Banana Hammock, no one knows who you are.
Joe
• • •
I come home Sunday night to 15 freakin emails? And I thought it was us old guys who weren’t supposed to have lives.
Paul
• • •
Jeff started it.
Joe
* * *
September 27, 2010
Blake, I continue to be blown away by the amount of energy you’re putting into the extra bonus features, and the marketing and publicity of Draculas.
I made a few tweaks to the working in the review email blast you just put in the dropbox…
CURRENT ARC REQUESTS: 165
Goal: 300
1. EMAIL TO PROOFREADER
Hi Marcus: Please find attached the manuscript in a word document. In terms of how to go about this, we would request that you make a running list of typos you locate and turn that list in with the corrected manuscript If they’re straight-forward misspellings, blaring typos, just correct them—American spelling please :). If you come across something more complex, please just make a note of it. It’s a big old book, and we would appreciate if you would go through the bonus content as well. Any questions, don’t hesitate to ask, and thank you again for your willingness to help us out on this project (we’ve already thanked you in the acknowledgments).
Best!
Blake
2. EMAIL ADDRESSES AND EMAIL FOR SENDING MS. TO UPCOMING RESPONDERS TO JOE’S BLOG ANNOUNCEMENT FOR ARCS AND TO GOOD READS
Thanks to:
Marcus Blakeston, Carl Graves, Rob Siders, Chris Rapking, Suzanne Tyrpak, Maria Konrath, Jeroen ten Berge,
Gef Fox, Nenad Ristic, Steve Windwalker, Chris Blewitt, Marc Buhmann, Krist Rufty, KD James, Cherie Reich, Stephen Grogan, Dr.CPE, David Dodd, Gail Snyder, John McCarthy, Anthea Strezze, Douglas Dorow, Jason Otoski, Juli Monroe, A. Sadie Timm, Julie Smith, Christy Pinheiro-Silva, K.S. Elkins, Carolyn Lee, Paul McMurray, Traci Hohenstein, Steve Malley, Debbi Mack, James Reed, Missy Meyer, Gretchen Rix, Karly Kirkpatrick, Brian Spaeth, Roxanne McHenry, Kaoru Tanaka, Dennis Welch, Cynthia Briggs, Baboi Alin Lucian, Andrea Allison, Steve Lewis, LaDonna Bubak, Jessica Crooks, Greg Swanson, Robert Carraher, Aldo Calcagno, Brian H “The Chalkboard Dad”, Mary Stella, Tamera Martens, Jeroen ten Berge, HL Arledge, Jason Davis, Suzanne Fyhrie Parrott, Scott Marlowe, Stacy Krueger, Philip Hansen, Carl Obermeier, Steve Peterson, Tyler Kneisly, Sandra Gilbert, Ahmed Khalifa, Lamar Giles, LK Rigel, Misty Baker, Raven Corinn Carluk, David Villalva, James Reasoner, Frederick Altstadt, Anthony Grogan, Donnie Light, Kim Wright, Pauline Funa, Gerald Writer, Kipp Speicher, Jennifer Baker, Holly Barnes, Elizabeth White, Trish Gerstman, J.E. Taylor, Rob Cundall, John Smith, Joe Bishop, Daniel Barbier, Claudia Lefeve, Geoffrey Rabe, Ty Simmons, Mike Heppe, Daryl Sedore, Helen Letourneau, Rai Aren, Selena Kitt, Georgiann Hennelly, Debbie Gilliam, Rhonda, Brenda Sedore, Janene Irvine, John Hartness; Robert Cundall; Keith Gaston; Kyle W. Kerr; Mickey Reed, Katie Hardin, Eghe Precious, Steven Beltzer, Amanda Pickett, Karen Dyck, Lakisha Speltzer, Catherine Saxton, Dorlana Vann, Phoebe Conn, Matthew Dow Smith, Terri Dukes, Vicki K. Brown, Ilsa Bick, Karen McGrath, Tee Tate, Vannessa Grace, Yeva Wiest, Anthony Policastro, Shannhu, Joanie Raisovich, Tim Rich, E. Wylie, Judy Sizemore, Loretta Giacoletto, Sharon Anderson, Holly, Jaime Wasserman, Katie Hardin, Natasha Pixie, Melissa Zellmer, David Wisehart, Moses Siregar III, Heather Dudley, William Tombaugh, Kendall Gutierrez, Georgekutty Adappur, Barb Best, Bobbie Crawford-McCoy, Paula Phillips, Aaron Patterson,
1st email to the troops:
Dear Friends: Attached to this email is the finished manuscript of DRACULAS, including all of its extensive bonus content. We have attached the book as a pdf, an epub file (for you Nook and Sony lovers) and a mobi file if the Kindle is your pleasure.
If you have any questions or issues with any of the file attachments, please don’t hesitate to get in touch via [email protected].
We will be following up with a second email in about a week with further instructions as we approach the 10/19 launch date. In the meantime, please just explore and enjoy DRACULAS (you should enjoy the bonus content…trust us, it’s off-the-hook). We hope you’ll read the book within the next week and start gathering your thoughts for a review.
We seriously couldn’t do this without you. Your willingness to help us spread the word about DRACULAS means the world to us, and we’ve already thanked every one of you in the acknowledgements at the end of the book (and if you find yourself missing, let us know!).
More soon!
All the best,
Blake, Joe, Jeff, and Paul
2nd email to the troops:
Dear Friends: As of this email, we are a mere four days from the launch of DRACULAS. Hopefully, you’ve read the book and written a review, and now it gets exciting.
As early as possible, ON OCTOBER 18, please post your review on your blog(s), Goodreads, Facebook, Shelfari, interstate overpasses, basically anywhere you see fit.
We would also request that you include the link to purchase DRACULAS on Amazon:
http://www.amazon.com/DRACULAS-Novel-Terror-ebook/dp/B0042AMD2M/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&m=AG56TWVU5XWC2&s=books&qid=1284569826&sr=8-1
Then send an email to [email protected], under the heading “REVIEW LINK” and drop us the link to your bl
og(s) review of the book, or if you don’t have a blog, include the text of your review in the email.
ON OCTOBER 19, please post your review onto Amazon’s DRACULAS page: http://www.amazon.com/DRACULAS-Novel-Terror-ebook/dp/B0042AMD2M/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&m=AG56TWVU5XWC2&s=books&qid=1284569826&sr=8-1. YOU DON’T HAVE TO BUY THE BOOK TO POST A REVIEW ON AMAZON, you just need an Amazon account.
If you use Twitter, please tweet about your review and also what Joe Konrath will be posting on his blog. http://jakonrath.blogspot.com. He will be including a link to every blog review of DRACULAS, and we want people to have to scroll through page after page after page to get to the bottom. The DraculasTheBook.com website will also feature all reviews.
To our knowledge, this type of marketing experiment has never been attempted on this level. What is the power of several hundred reviews all appearing on the same day, and on Amazon? Is it enough take DRACULAS viral? To hit #1 in the Kindle store? That’s our hope.
We find it exciting and liberating to enlist our wonderful readers to help us connect to a wider audience. Because the more books we sell, the more books we are able to write.
For those of you who have expressed concern that Draculas is only available as a Kindle ebook, remember that it is DRM free. That means, once bought from Amazon, it can be easily transferred to any other ereading device (Nook, Kobo, Sony, etc.) Visit www.DraculastheBook.com for instructions. Draculas will also soon be available in print.
Thank you again for joining us in this experiment, thanks for reading our work, and here’s to a successful launch. Keep on the lookout for another email shortly letting everyone know how we did.
All the best,
Blake, Joe, Jeff, and Paul
Joe
• • •
Private Rogers 1.1 is in Blake’s folder. Everyone take a look. I think it could still use some tweaking, so anyone who wants to volunteer, go for it.
Joe
• • •
Okay. Don’t want to step on anyone’s toes, but …
It’s a great sequence, but I don’t see what purpose it serves. We introduce a new character only to kill him. I admit that I am by nature a taker-outer rather than a puter-inner, so let me give my reasons for relegating this to alternate endings (along with my Dr. Driscoll sequence).
1) I think Dr. Cook appearing to Shanna in clean scrubs adds to his mystique.
2) having draculas escape on Pvt Rogers’s watch indicates that the autoclave was a failure and that dracs could be escaping elsewhere. (Clay was blown through an open window, so that’s a different story)
3) in order to have closure in this book, we need the reader to buy that the autoclave bomb worked, that this episode is over, and whatever comes after is all new.
Pace, Blake.
Paul
• • •
Good points, Paul.
Blake (and I) wanted to drill it home that Cook is still alive because he accidentally was mistaken for human, just like Duane Jones in Night of the Living Dead was accidentally killed because he was mistaken for a zombie. In both cases, it is the men with the guns who make the mistake.
I killed Rogers because I thought he wasn’t the best example of exemplary soldiering. Blake originally didn’t bring the dracula into it. When I did bring the dracula in, I killed it, so there weren’t any more running around.
But I also think your points are correct.
What if Rogers gave him a free pass and didn’t die, and Cook’s scrubs were clean?
I don’t want to force this scene in, but I like what it brings.
On the other hand, maybe we can give Cook a line when he’s being interviewed: “I barely escaped. One of the soldiers even wanted to shoot me, until I showed him I hadn’t been bitten.”
Thoughts?
Joe
• • •
Ditto - very valid points, Paul…by way of explanation, I started this scene, because in reading the final sequence in DRACULAS, it occurred to me that (a) I thought the perimeter scene was under-drawn, and (b) the original idea of having Mort escape in opposite fashion to the end of the NIGHT OF THE LIVING DEAD hadn’t been fully achieved. But maybe we don’t need that. I do agree that we need to have the full sense that all of the draculas are dead and that perhaps this also screws up the pacing of the final scenes…let’s hear what Jeff thinks and sleep on it. I’m not married to this either way, and if it gets relegated to deleted scenes, I’m okay with that.
Blake
• • •
I think you’re pushing for a pop-cultural point/reference that no one’s gonna notice or care about.
I’m not trying to rain on anyone’s parade, but I don’t think it adds to the narrative. And if it doesn’t, then ya gotta let it go. This is not a tantrum igniter for me. I simply don’t think it’s necessary. This is a collaboration and majority rules. But for my part, I think it’s extraneous, so I vote “alternate ending.”
Paul
• • •
I think we can keep it omitted. But then I do want a bit added to Dr. Cook at the end, explaining he almost got shot.
While folks probably won’t notice the pop culture reference, the whole “Moorecook is saved” was part of my first conversation with Blake about Draculas, and one of the reasons we wanted to write this story in the first place. Night of the Living Dead (and I Am Legend by Matheson—at least the Vincent Price film version of it) was about trapped people surrounded by monsters. NotLD blew me away the first time I saw it (nine years old?), especially the nihilistic ending. Doing a reverse-nihilistic ending drew me to this project.
But then, as long as it’s known what our intent was, I see no problem in cutting it.
Curious what Jeff thinks…
Joe
* * *
September 28, 2010
Okay, looking back, maybe I’m being a tight-ass. If this section is important to you guys, if leaving it out’s going to make the book something less than you intended, let’s go with it. Seriously.
Paul
• • •
But honestly, Paul, if it struck you as a speedbump in the pacing, particularly at the most critical part of the book (the end), that gives me serious concern about the scene and that maybe it shouldn’t be in there. I’m sure we’ve all written books having a certain scene or note in mind to hit at the end, and then when the time came, it just didn’t jive with the rest of the book. Let’s see what Jeff thinks.
Blake
• • •
I’m withholding my vote until I’m done with the proofreading. But the fact that a scene was part of the original idea should be irrelevant to whether or not it’s appropriate for the book as it stands now.
Jeff
• • •
I’m contacting various Kindle booklight manufacturers to see if we can get an endorsement deal. A Kindle light saves Adam’s life, and perhaps some company would be happy enough about the product placement to cover our start-up costs (art, formatting, website.)
Plus, it would be great publicity, for both us and them, if Draculas was the very first ebook with advertising in it. Both Blake and Jeff know I’ve been predicting this for years…
Joe
• • •
Agreed.
Blake
• • •
Remember, though, the light is dying as soon as he turns it on, creating a ticking clock to darkness.
Jeff
• • •
It they don’t give us a deal, I’ll have the light die and Adam can smash it into the wall and say, “This fucking piece of shit is so unreliable!”
Blake
• • •
Adam started running, made it out of the laboratory and halfway through reception, when his XXXXXX finally faded to black.
He froze, waited a moment, thinking his eyes would adjust, that he would be able to see something, but it never happened.
His first instinct was primal, animal panic, a sense of the walls
both closing in and spinning until he’d completely lost his bearing.
DRACULAS (A Novel of Terror) Page 58