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

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 Fürstenberg-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

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

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 (cgdouble2@sbcglobal.net) for the cover art, and Rob Siders (Rob@52novels.com) 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.