Draculas (67 page)

* * *

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.

XXXXXX. It leaves you in the dark to be eaten by vampires. $29.99.

Jeff

* * *

XXXXXX...it's not going to help you when the lights go out during a vampire outbreak.

Blake

* * *

Our emails crossed and yours is much funnier...LOL

Blake

* * *

Clay stopped at the Pepsi machine and got a refreshingly tasty Mountain Dew. Halfway into sipping the delicious beverage, he heard a noise on his left. Reaching into his Levis 517 Boot Cut jeans, he removed his Benchmade Griptilian folder, flicking open the blade.

But it wasn't a dracula. It was Jenny, riding a brand new Schwinn Seneca 700cc, her L.A. Gear Walk N Tone shoes furious on the pedals.

"They're coming!" she yelled while screeching the brakes. "But before we run, I need to apply some L'Oreal True Match Concealer! I don't fight monsters without looking my best!"

Guys, we're gonna be rich...

Joe

* * *

Okay, I'd never heard an XXXXXX, but now I
really
want one.

Paul

* * *

No, I completely agree with Paul. It's a good self-contained scene, but it feels less like "enhancing the irony" than "overexplaining a plot point." Readers don't want six pages of a new character right at the finale.

Jeff

* * *

I've gotta say, this book flows incredibly well for a four-author project! I'd expected to find a lot of awkward pacing, but no, it's smoooooooth. Huge kudos to Blake for managing to figure out where everything should be pasted together.

For a book with so many characters, they're all distinct, and I don't think readers will have any difficulty following the action.

I fixed a few typos, some redundant description, and the occasional continuity error. I changed the iPad to a Kindle with a light. Cut a line here and there.

I have a couple more changes to make (there's a paragraph about Clay/Shanna's relationship that's too much like Randall/Jenny's relationship, and Randall gives Jenny a hatchet that's never used), and then I'm going to go through the special features.

Jeff

* * *

There's another deleted scene for the fire.

Joe

* * *

Okay, I'm ready to hand this thing off to Joe.

The Clay epilogue is fantastic. Feels like it was planned out from the beginning.

Jeff

* * *

Don't know about rich, but I think the least the Taurus folks can do is send me a Raging Bull.

Paul

* * *

If Taurus contacts you, asking if you received the firearm they sent your way via my address, they're liars and never sent me anything.

Also, remind them I wanted extra clips.

Joe

* * *

And somebody is bound to send Blake some red candy!

Jeff

* * *

Okay, I'm just getting started, and have only made some small changes.

I switched Clay's profession from cop to high school guidance counselor. Now, instead of all the shooting, he encourages the draculas to talk about their feelings.

Stacie is now a man.

I cut all the stuff Jeff wrote.

In my scenes, I added two commas, and fixed a typo.

I also made one minor addition. Dr. Lanz is now a minor. Sort of like Doogie Howser. Because of this, he is now being played by Neil Patrick Harris, who has turned the role into a singing part. Not quite sure how that will work in an ebook, but this is all such a fabulous new technology I'm sure there's a way.

Oh, almost forgot. I also changed every noun in the book to "wiener."

"Wiener jerked against his wieners, making the wiener rattle. The wieners had pumped enough wieners into him to kill a wiener, but the wieners hadn't abated. Wiener wiped away another wiener, wondering if wiener should have seen wiener coming."

You can see how the story is vastly improved.

Also, I cut all the stuff Blake wrote.

Joe

* * *

Interesting changes, Joe.

BTW, could you please cut all the stuff I wrote too?

Paul

* * *

As long as I still get my 25% of the royalties...

Jeff

* * *

And for real now...

I made the formatting globally uniform in terms of punctuation and spacing (Kindle hates it when the return key is pressed more than once.)

Put the Sgt. Rogers scene in the deleted scenes.

Changed the order of some of the special features.

Added the emails that were in the dropbox.

Jeff and Paul, you didn't put in your acknowledgments. If you don't have anyone specific to thank, we can just use "The Authors Wish to Thank" and then list all the folks that helped us.

I'm getting started on reading it, and should finish by tomorrow.

Joe

* * *

BTW, could you please cut all the stuff I wrote too?

I can't find the scenes you wrote, Paul. Was it the scene with the wieners?

Joe

September 29, 2010

While I was editing, I got sidetracked on the email extras, and just spent two hours making that all nice and uniform and clear, fixing some typos and formatting.

I also added the "half-assed" joke Jeff cut to the Deleted Scenes collection. I'm sad to see it go from the manuscript, but at least it lives on as a bonus extra...

Joe

* * *

I just skimmed through the emails. 40k words of email. 40k!

Paul

* * *

"40k words of email"

And that's after cutting out all of the pointless emails that Strand sent. Did you get the eleven pages of cross-stitch patterns he sent, under the heading, "Super Important Draculas Notes"?

Blake had his moments as well, like when he cut and pasted the entire Wikipedia article on the line of succession to the British Throne. I finally gave up reading that one at #1491 - Baron Godfrey of Furstenberg-Herdringen, second son of Baron Sylvester.

The only one not abusing our email protocol with pointless messages that have nothing to do with the project is me. I have several theories on why that is, and will be sending them to you, in groups of threes, over the next eight days.

Joe

October 1, 2010

Love you guys. It's been an honor, and a great deal of fun, working with you on this project. I couldn't have picked three better writers.

Let's consider doing this again in 2011, schedules permitting.

Joe

* * *

You too, brother. Feeling honestly a little emotional writing this. It has been nothing but a total joy and a true privilege working with all of you. Everyone brought their A-game, everyone gave 100%, we didn't always agree, but I'm really proud of how we worked through those times when we didn't see eye-to-eye. Truly one of the best writing experiences I've had, and I know I'm a better writer having worked with each of you. I really couldn't be more thrilled with how this book and collaboration turned out.

Thanks, boys, for a helluva good time.

Blake

* * *

This from a Horrorworld interview going live later this month

Q: There's a lot of nervousness, excitement, and hand-wringing about the move toward electronic publishing. What's your take -- as a writer and as a reader -- on this new digital age?

A: I love it and I've embraced it. I hate the piracy, but the leeches are always with us. I've put all titles from my backlist to which I still own e-rights up online as ebooks. As I write this I've just finished my contribution to a 4-way collaboration with Blake Crouch, Joe Konrath (as Jack Kilborn), and Jeff Strand. It's a straight-to-ebook novel called Draculas, and we had a super-fun time writing it. If only all novels could be this easy and fast. 70k words in 5 weeks (plus 40k words of email). I'm glad to see I can still keep up with the younger guys. These are 3 excellent horror/thriller writers, turning in sharp, clean prose at an amazing rate. It's real horror, lots of gore, tons of action, and a fair amount of humor. This begs to be filmed.

Paul

October 2, 2010

Even though these bonus features are about 92% e-mail fellatio, I'll add one more slurp and say that this has indeed been a lot of fun to write.

Thanks to Joe for the idea, to Blake for taking on the hardest job, and to Paul for overall awesomeness.

But if we're going to include behind-the-scenes e-mails for DRACULAS II, somebody needs to sleep with somebody else's wife.

Jeff

Joe wants to thank his wife Maria and son Talon for beta testing the book and yelling at him to make changes. He also thanks his co-authors for putting up with him, Carl Graves ([email protected]) for the cover art, and Rob Siders ([email protected]) for formatting this bad boy. Also, big props to the Amazon crew for their support and assistance: Alex Carr, Stephanie Derouin, Phil Finch, Terry Goodman, Victoria Griffith, Nader Kabbani, Jason Kuykendall, Brian Mitchell, Jeff Tollefson, and Sarah Tomashek.

Blake wants to thank his wife and kids for putting up with the six intense weeks during which this book was written (love you guys!), Chris Rapking for designing the amazing
www.draculasthebook.com
website, Jereoen ten Berge, Marcus Blakeston, Selena Kitt and Carmen Montgomery for their excellent proofreading, Suzanne Tyrpak for her tireless assistance on the marketing side of things, and of course, Joe, Jeff, and Paul, for a wild and amazing ride.

Jeff wants to thank his wife for letting him hang out with Joe again, even though he's a bad influence, and Michael McBride for answering some crucial research questions about how to make a clown explode.

Paul wants to thank his co-authors for being so easy to work with and Jeff Bezos for making it all possible.

And finally, from all of us, a big thank you to everyone who helped spread the word and get this book off the ground, especially...

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, 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, Mark Feggeler, Merrill Heath, Eileen Andrews, Cheryl Koch, Brian J. Hatcher, Christine Verstraete, Anthony S. Policastro, Colin Harvey, Christopher Payne, Deborah Smith, Elinor Estepa, Garrett Cook, Denise Lynn, Conrad Zero, Geoff Brown, CK Webb, Deborah Shlian, Gerald Rice, Debra Martin, Giovanni Tasco, Jess Gulbranson, Carson Buckingham, Graham Storrs, Jacqueline Hulse, Darcia Helle, Kristin Centorcelli, Karin Tillotson, Kate Jonez, Jim M. Munchel, Jamie DeBree, Ted Sturtz, Jim Gavin, Kona Gallagher, Kurt M. Criscione, Leslie Klinger, Jen Hilborne, Darryl Spong, Eileen C. Coleman, Lisa Nieland, Kimi Little, Jan D'Ambrosia, Malena Lott, Jim McLeod, Carla Rene, Nick Kelly, Rich Smith, Pat Bertram, Ruth Francisco, Tina Lonergan, Russell Brooks, Sarah Swann, Jon Spoelstra, Rick Hautala, Simon Wood, CJ West, Stacia Kelly, Sue Campbell, Sunny Bravin, Ed Parrott, KayAnna Kirby, Adrienne Crezo, A. Sadie Timm, Amy G. Vega, Rowena Cherry, Natalie Roberts, Tonia Mccrae, Tom Randklev, Willow Polson, Norm Cowie, Jason Davis, Kevin McLaughlin, Cole Drewes, Sean Wright, Sally Bosco, Kristopher Cowell, Helen Hanson, Bill Gagliani, Bella Street, Barbara Silkstone, Giovanni Gelati, Alex Wilhelm, Lillian Slusar, Nancy Slusar, Larry Zieminski, Nicole Wilde, Tanya, Linda Boulanger, Jeff Bryan, Joe Nassise, Rick Taubold, Judy Nichols, Tammy Souch, and Julie Achterhoff.