Konrath, J.A. - DRACULAS (A Novel of Terror)

Blake, you can go dark right about where your scene left off.

I believe overlapping timeframes is the best way to do this. Readers will be able to pick up that this is all happening at once, and by using cues such as the gunshots and the intercom announcements, they’ll be able to keep track of what is happening when.

So far, I see zero difficulty in piecing this together seamlessly. We might need to juggle a scene or two, but it’s going to mesh very well.

Joe

• • •

Shanna’s conversion at the end of her big scene might be a little over the top, but god it was fun.

Lanz kills the power…anyone know how to make that work? There’s gotta be a backup generator. He could destroy that first, then go after the main. But total darkness — uh-uh. All hospitals have battery-operated emergency lights in all the hallways. I don’t see how we can have total darkness, folks, but we can have loooong, deeeeep shadows from which friends and foes can spring.

Randall and Clay need to bump skulls at some point.

Lanz has to go after Jenny. I’d love to do that from alternating POVs with Jenny finally outwitting and killing him — and he can’t believe that he’s fallen victim to a lesser mind.

This is proving to be fun.

BTW, I’ve passed the 10k mark and have miles to go before I sleep.

Paul

• • •

I like Shanna’s conversion. It may need to be described in a bit more detail, but it’s totally plausible and you did it well.

The lights out will mean the generator will kick on, which will supply power to essential hospital equipment and utilities, but the lights will be dimmer (emergency boxes only above doorways) and the intercom will be out.

I dug the Jenny/Lanz dynamic. He’s currently after her in Pediatrics. If you’d like to do his POV scenes, we can work it out.

Joe

• • •

We can tag-team it. Fun.

Paul

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All - I’m back in civilization, and can’t wait to read everyone’s parts…Paul - feel free to do the chapel scene, I wasn’t seeing a way to work it out in my scene…a question about the hospital power going out…are we going completely dark? No backup lights…having to use flashlights or glo-sticks only? Let me know.

Blake

• • •

Also, I’m writing a Lanz POV scene to take him up to pediatrics, and show he seems to be smarter than the rest of the draculas. Possibly because he ingested the infection rather than got bitten.

Paul, aren’t there some diseases that can be more severe based on the method of infection? My mind is blanking. But I’m pretty sure there are some bugs that are worse if you ingest them, as oppose to inhale them, or something…

Joe

• • •

Up to speed finally on everyone’s sections, and damn, boys! Really happy with how this is shaping up. Love Randall and Tina dynamic. Clay going through the hospital with his big guns is just plain badass, and Joe, we knew this already, but something is seriously wrong with you…”is that a flamingo?” OMG. Bravo, gents!

Blake

August 30, 2010

I wasn’t happy with her immediate gonzetta transformation, so I toned it down.

Paul

August 31, 2010

JCPL had a fire somewhere yesterday afternoon that left much of this area of the Shore without power. (I was reading by flashlight last night.) But we’re back now.

Paul

• • •

Doesn’t sound too hard…

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20100827/ap_on_fe_st/us_odd_snake_hospital_outage

Paul

• • •

I’ve made it so Lanz has more of his mental faculties than most of the draculas, due to ingesting the blood rather than being bitten. It’s in the JOE folder, LANZ_2.0.

But it occurred to me that Benny also seems higher-functioning and calmer than the others. I was thinking that because Benny is severely depressed, he’d take SSRIs (Prozac, Paxil, Zoloft) which might negate some of the “wildness” that being a dracula causes.

When Randall tussles with Benny, a half empty bottle of sertraline can fall out of his clown suit, and I’m thinking he can tell Jenny the nurse, and she can arm herself with bottles of pills and start throwing them in draculas’ mouths. They’ll still be hostile, but not as frantic. Could be cool to have her walk past a bunch of docile draculas, standing there watching her without coming after her.

Or not. Just spitballing. But hospitals are filled with drugs, and Jenny is the obvious one to use drugs against them.

Joe

• • •

The Benny/Zoloft thing is clever. Use it. But…

SSRIs take weeks to work, while benzodiazepines (Valium, ativan, xanax) can kick in in 20-30 minutes — quicker if injected. Could have some mellow draculas.

Jenny vs Lanz — how about Jenny gets a long intracardiac needle, attaches it to a syringe filled with potassium chloride (KCl) and rams it into Lanz’s heart as he grapples with her? It will cause cardiac arrest in a human. Maybe it just slows him down enough for her to run the upper part of an IV pole through each of his eyes into his brain.

Paul

• • •

JEFF 4.0 is done. I wasn’t specific about Benny’s medication, but my section acknowledges that drugged-up draculas could be more docile.

On other note, only Randall should call them “draculas,” unless Jenny or somebody thinks “That’s what Randall called them” first.

Jeff

• • •

Jenny calls them that because she heard Randall say it. I’ll have her use the intercom to talk to Randall, then she’ll use the word so everyone else in the hospital hears it.

Joe

• • •

Whatever Jenny says to Randall I’ll incorporate into JEFF 5.0.

Jeff

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When does the power go out in the timeline?

I have it going out at the end of my Shanna/Chapel scene but I can move it later.

Lanz realizes there’s a heavily armed Rambo type coming through the hospital and needs to turn things to his advantage. Ah-ha! Power failure.

I can have Lanz disable the On/Off switch of the backup generator, then destroy the main power breakers. This will leave only battery-powered emergency hall lights until Randall hotwires the backup generator to start up.

Should we do this before Lanz finds Jenny?

Paul

• • •

Lanz already confronted Jenny in the last scene I wrote, and Jenny set him on fire, which he extinguished before he ran off.

Paul, you can then have him run downstairs, past gun-toting Clay, and figure out the best way to get both Clay and Jenny is in darkness, because draculas have a tapetum lucidum and can see well in low light.

Joe

• • •

I read that scene.

Okay. I’ll tackle that next.

Paul

September 4, 2010

I was just finally catching up with everyone’s sections, and it looks great. I think we’re at about 38,000 words right now. Jeff and Paul, I noticed that some of the files in your folders were already in the Draculas 1.6 manuscript, so Paul I moved “Paul 1.3” them into your “Old” folder, and Jeff, I moved “Benny 1.0, Jeff 1.0, and Jeff 1.1” into your old folder. It’ll make it easier to add things to the manuscript if only new sections are there.

Have a great weekend, all!

Blake

September 5, 2010

Paul and I got a lot of work done in New Orleans.

Just kidding. All we did was drink.

Joe

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Shocker