Draculas (52 page)

Blake

* * *

All - so Paul's cop character is Clayton Theel (great name)...I think we called the lumberjack Randall for now, unless Jeff wants to change him to something else. Clayton's girlfriend is Shanna, the historian/anthropologist. Jenny, hospice nurse, is the lumberjack's ex.

Jeff and Paul, all we need to complete the setup is a brief description of your character who comes into the ER and gets themselves bitten by Mortimer Moorecook. Maybe mention what ailment brought them to the ER. This will be your Dracula you get to reek havoc with, so go nuts.

Blake

* * *

Howzabout I use the ER doc Kurt Lanz, MD ("No,
not
'Kurt' --
Doctor
Lanz.") on duty who thinks he's hot shit and too good for this lame community hospital and all these hicks he's got to deal with? When he first changes he's sure he can control the blood thirst because he's a superior being, but he's so wrong. And then he gets into it.

I'd also like to add to Shanna's POV in 2 that she's going to break it off with Clay before the gun show - she can't take another gun show.

Paul

* * *

I love it, Paul. I don't know if I can do this in my Moorecook dracula POV (because he's higher-functioning than the people he infects) but I dig the idea of showing, through a dracula POV, the mental crumbling as these intelligent adults begin to lose their high cognitive functioning abilities.

Blake

* * *

That works for me, Paul.

We need to figure out if draculas die like zombies, then mutate into monsters, or if they only mutate when they get bitten and survive.

Joe

* * *

I have an answer to my own question.

If someone is bitten and lives, they become a dracula. Not as drastically as Moorecook did (he was bitten by the source, which is more virulent), but they mutate over the course of half an hour, losing their mental facilities as they change.

Those who are killed by draculas also come back to life if there is enough of them still intact and they still have enough blood left. Maybe an hour time frame to reanimate the dead tissue.

This way, we can follow certain characters becoming draculas, and also have a surprise morgue scene where the dead also become draculas, adding to the outbreak.

Joe

* * *

Just read your additions, Paul. Expertly done, you tying together four main characters, and amusing as well.

This is gonna kick ass.

Joe

* * *

Randall sounds good for my lumberjack (and I'll make him responsible for calling them "draculas" instead of "vampires.")

My dracula is Benny, a children's performer clown whose magic show was poorly received by the birthday boy. Randall and Benny bond over the embarrassing nature of their injuries.

Since Joe is mean and impatient, I'll say upfront that I won't be able to start writing until the 17th, but I'll launch right into it like a maniac after that!

Jeff

* * *

Dracula clown. Awesome. I'll put Benny and Dr. Kurt in the massacre scene. I should be able to knock that out in a day or two.

I won't be able to go full-force on this until June. So if Blake and Paul want to get going, go for it. Just keep me and Jeff in the loop.

Joe

* * *

Ditto...super-cool, Paul. Can't wait to see what toys Clay brings to the party.

Blake

* * *

Joe's also a selfish lover, let's not forget that.

A dracula clown? I'm scared of normal clowns. That's awesome!

Blake

* * *

Joe - when you get the ER massacre done, I'll work on the morgue and maybe we can have the setup done in a few days...I'm working on a couple other projects, but I should be able to get a little of this in every day. Helps that it's a blast to write.

Blake

* * *

Jeff, please use my favorite line about clowns. The birthday boy said, "That's not a clown! That's just some guy dressed up like a clown!"

Paul

* * *

That may very well be the best line of all time...

Jeff

May 10, 2010

I think my characters will be Adam and Stacie Murray. Stacie's in the hospital to be induced for her first pregnancy - twins. They're sort of a young, gentle, bright-eyed couple. Around 30. Stacie is a high-school English teacher on maternity leave and Adam is a Lutheran minister. He's been in Durango about 5 years, and recently took over a church. Sometimes he serves as the hospital chaplain. He knows Randall and Clayton. Maybe he's even tried to help Randall in the past when he's gone on a drunken tear. I do like the idea a lot that this is a small town, and all these characters not only know each other, but have history.

Blake

* * *

He'll be very disappointed when crosses don't work.

Paul

* * *

Yeah, I'm sensing a crisis of faith coming...

Blake

May 12, 2010

...Deputy Theel will be bringing to the party:
http://world.guns.ru/grenade/gl15-e.htm

It's going to be loaded with his custom 40mm Beehive rounds filled with 00buck. So we're going to need LOTS of draculas. Be great to have a situation where one of your characters is facing absolutely hopeless odd and then there's this horrendous racket and the draculas' heads are being shredded...and Clay rounds a corner with this baby.

Of course he's eventually going to run out of ammo.

Paul

* * *

Nice.

He should have one of these too.

http://www.metacafe.com/watch/78284/automatic_shotgun/

Joe

* * *

The famous "streetsweeper."

Paul

* * *

Well, my priest has a can of really intense mace from his wife's purse. Take that, vampire!

Blake

May 31, 2010

I'm thinking we need a throughline. You know, a progression of story beats for the big picture -- how it's gonna go. Or maybe just a timeline so that we know what's going on with the big picture and we can plug into that.

What's the time span of the novel? 4 hours? 5? 6?

For instance...(this is just placeholder stuff):

Hour 1: carnage in the ER

Hour 2: the first victims change and begin to attack; no one aware of he threat except new victims

Hour 3: 20 Draculas now and rising - panic spreads; tires slashed; phones dead (how do we kill cells?)

See where I'm going? It will save a lot of editing and rewriting later if we're all on the same page re the timing.

Paul

* * *

Agreed.

I'm still cranking on deadlines, but hope to get started on this soon--perhaps July?

Joe

June 11, 2010

Blake is visiting me for a few days in July. We're going to hammer out the timeline and first attack scene, then everyone can get rolling on their story arcs.

Joe

* * *

Poor, poor Blake.

Jeff

* * *

I'm also forcing Blake to wear a dress and dance the Lambada--the dance of love.

But "forcing" may be too strong a term...

Joe

August 11, 2010

Hey Dude - you want me to take a shot at finishing the ER scene in Draculas? I'm in between projects and have the time at the moment. Let me know.

Blake

* * *

Sure, give it a shot.

Joe

August 15, 2010

Paul & Jeff & Joe: Howdy, boys. Hope summer's been good to you. I've finished a project I was working on, and have finally had a chance to devote some time to Draculas and try to get us all set up to do this. I visited Joe in July and we worked on the ER scene together. I've just now wrapped it up, and I think Draculas is at a point where we can all begin working on it together. I've dropped an updated manuscript in the dropbox.

To recap, here are the characters/draculas we're following:

Blake: Mort dracula/my pregnant couple in the maternity ward Adam and Stacie Murray

Joe: Oasis dracula/Nurse Jenny (Randall's ex-wife)

Jeff: Benny the Clown dracula/Randall the Lumberjack

Paul: Dr. Lanz dracula/Clayton "Deputy Dawg", Shanna's boyfriend

As we get close to launching into this, I'm finding it a challenge to coordinate everyone's movement and the timing of the outbreak. As Paul pointed out, this is going to take a little more forethought if we don't want to do major rewrites at the end (I don't - :).

I think it's a smart thing to divide this book out by hour increments. It'll make it easier on us keeping things straight and also be a cool thing for readers since this is essentially written in real time.

Here's a basic outline through the start of Hour 3, totally up for debate and changing and input, but just to get us going. Please let me know what you think...if everyone is good on this outline through 9 chapters, let's start writing...

HOUR 1

Ch.1 -- (WRITTEN) Mortimer's POV receives skull, bites himself, convulses.

Ch.2 -- (WRITTEN)Shanna's POV riding with Mort to the hospital.

HOUR 2

Ch.3 -- (WRITTEN) Jenny's POV: ER massacre, ending with Benny the Clown, Oasis' mother, and other ER patients killed by Mort (5 dead), and Oasis, Lanz, and the ambulance paramedic bitten/infected. Mort has run off into the hospital.

Ch.4 (LANZ-PAUL) -- Massacre aftermath (brief downtime). I think this should be written in Lanz' infected POV. At first, he's okay, he's barking orders. For all he knows, this is some kind of outbreak. Get the dead into the morgue. Get CDC on the horn. Quarantine those who were bitten (paramedic/Oasis). He'll talk with them. Call the sheriff's department. He ingested some blood foam, but wasn't bitten. By end of this chapter, perhaps while he's examining Oasis, he's becoming a dracula, and that should be a blast to write.

Ch.5(RANDALL-JEFF) what I'm thinking is, he limps outside to his truck and gets one of his huge chainsaws or axes or whatever (go nuts on this), and then returns while the ER is dealing with the aftermath/cleanup and goes off to find Mortimer dracula who fled the ER into the rest of the hospital chasing the softball players -- Randall gets himself into another wing. This is a short chapter...Jeff think about where you want Randall when outbreak reaches critical mass. This is our first intro to him in his POV, too, so we should probably get a sense of how he feels about Jenny.

Ch.6(JENNY-JOE) she's assisting with helping the ER wounded, and maybe by the end of this she sees the changes that are happening in the infected and runs off into some distant part of the hospital to hide. Short chapter

Ch.7(MORGUE/OUTBREAK-BLAKE) Just before all hell breaks loose, nurse Winslow in the morgue, and the doors start rattling. Oh shit. The dead are back as draculas, the injureds' metamorphoses is complete, and it's a free for all. I could see us combining POV's in this chapter, showing Lanz, Oasis, Mort and others going berserk, taking out entire wings, drinking from blood bags, etc., maybe cutting the power). I can write most of this, but would love to have short bits from Oasis, Lanz, and Benny the Clown to incorporate.

Note -- the trick is realizing there are several stages building up to full scale draculas running amok: 1
st
, just Mort, and his ER rampage; then the rampage of about 10 draculas who Mort infected; then, when their victims come alive, it's like 40 or 50 and we're off.

HOUR 3

Ch.8(PREGNANT COUPLE -- BLAKE) This just introduces them. They hear chaos all around them. She's in early stages of labor.

Ch.9 Arrival of Clayton fuck'n Theel. He's come to pick up Shanna (who's somewhere hiding in the hospital by this point and hasn't been answering her cell), but something's wrong...the hospital's dark, he hears screaming going on inside. Earlier he heard a call about an ER disturbance but this is clearly serious. In he goes. Probably with some ridiculous gun.

Honestly, I think after chapter 9 we're truly set up to play around with our characters. And keep in mind that the 40+ dracula outbreak hasn't arrived yet.

So, to take it to the next stage, Joe writes chapter 6

I'll write 7 and 8

Jeff writes 5

Paul writes 4 and 9

Everyone also write a scene with your draculas becoming draculas. Joe, I can't remember, are you writing Oasis or another child? I remember something about a blind girl and her seeing eye dog becoming a dracula and turning on her, but that just sounded mean, even for you ;), which means I hope you write it.

Two more things...re: outside help coming to the hospital. We establish it's in the middle of nowhere (as it truly is in Durango where I live) and I think it'd be cool if the sherrifs deputies (like 6 or 7) showed up during hour 3 or 4, and got themselves wiped out in the parking lot while the draculas were slashing tires, so then no one comes for awhile, and when they do, a respectable perimeter is set up. I just don't think there is any way we can make it that no word gets out that something terrible is going down. BUT...cell phones stay jammed, even after power is lost.

When this round of chapters is in, Joe and I can go through and smooth everything out, and we'll see where we are. In the meantime, I'll also try to put together a good hospital map, and float around a timeline for the rest of the book with major beats...sound good?

As I worked on this today, I realized we aren't going to reach a point where we all just go off and write in isolation for 15K words. I think we're all going to have to sort of address the same period of time concurrently and stay in constant contact, making sure everything jives before moving on. Should be challenging and fun.