To relaunch my long neglected blog I thought I should start with my latest story- A Study in Blood. [21472 words]
I started writing it in November of 2013 and finished it last week, the beginning of March 2014. Pretty fast for me, especially considering it's length (21,000 words), but it was really easy to write.
I'm a big fan of what's known as Wold-Newton fiction, stories involving several fictional characters from other authors brought together. The most famous example would be Alan Moore's League of Extraordinary Gentlemen, which I've read for many years. Personally though, I prefer Kim Newman's Anno Dracula series and I bought the latest one (amazon.co.uk/Anno-Dracula-Alucard-Kim-Newman) in early November last year. At the time I was going through another Sherlock Holmes phase (it's almost constant now!) and I started to think how my own adaptation of a Holmes story would work and if I would involve other famous characters. The problem with the crossover genre, though, is that it's massively overdone- Titan Books have at least fifteen separate Holmes novels in which he meets other literary characters, the market is flushed with it! But, this is when I caught upon my own idea- what if it were the cases that were shared?
I'd also been in a Dracula phase and I realised that Van Helsing and John Seward would have been in London at roughly the same time as Holmes (1890's) so then my idea struck me- what if there was no Holmes? what if it was Van Helsing and Seward instead? The stalwart doctor and the eccentric genius? I felt immediately that it should start at the start- with A Study in Scarlet, the first Holmes story. I also knew that I wanted to pervert the story, turn famous things on their head- the first image I had (I always picture scenes in my stories, like a movie trailer) was of the room in Lauriston Gardens with 'Rache' on the wall but inverted- 'Rache' written by wiping clean letters in a wall covered in blood. I remembered that 'Rache' is revealed to be a German word and loved the connection- Van Helsing speaks German! I flicked through the book and thought that I could probably do a super shortened version (A Study in Scarlet is a novel) and started plotting out the story on A3 paper.
My biggest problem was adapting the facts so as to throw off a reader familiar with the original, but not to do it stupidly- Holmes and Watson find a wedding ring on the first corpse and I changed it to a cameo but then I realised how dumb that was; they're both bits of jewelry, what's the difference? The changes had to be much more subtle and metaphoric. I stepped back and looked at the most important thing to change- the Killer. The most known thing about the original is that the killer is a cabby and Holmes lures him into their flat at the end so this I had to change- it had to be hard for the reader to guess a suspect and surprising when Van Helsing grabs his man at the end. I needed a backstory to match The Country of The Saints (the original backstory and second half of the novel). So I got to brainstorming...
The message was in German and was a red-herring. So I figured VH would wrongly assume he was the target of the message and get side-tracked. But who was the message really for? Someone else German... I did a Google search for German vampires and my idea exploded into reality- F W Murnau's Nosferatu is set in Germany and all the characters are German! For those that don't know- Murnau couldn't get the rights to adapt Dracula as a movie so changed all the character names of the novel and set it in a fictional German city instead of London. I had my backstory- Orlock would be just an anaemic (but an evil one) and 'Hutter' (Harker) would be my revenge killer. the story would play on VH's fears owing to it's similarity to Dracula. After this breakthrough I simply worked the idea backwards to the room with the body and had all the subtle changes I needed- so then I got to writing!
I began with an almost line-for-line interpretation of the original where I changed names and certain phrases only. I knew it would be dangerous as people would think it plagiarism and unoriginal but my plan was to slowly drift more and more from Doyle as the story progressed until it ended as all me- this I did, for the most part. I realised in early January that I might've bitten off more than I could chew as it felt more authentic to adapt it at roughly the same size- was I going to write a novel? I knew I wouldn't be including the whole second half so it would definitely be short for a novel but it was daunting. The only thing about it was that it was so much fun! I really loved imagining Van Helsing and Seward as best buds, cruising round Victorian London solving crimes, so cool!
I cracked on and, as I said, finished it last week. I'm incredibly happy with what I've achieved and hope you like it too, please don't feel shy to criticise, I'm a big boy and can take it. I have a follow-up plotted out and even an idea for a novel... maybe someday.
B A Jones 10/03/2014
