This week's story is called: Uprising (10,116 words)
Around the time that I was coming up with the idea for The Wolf of Whitechapel (my version of a werewolf) I also had an idea for how I would re-interpret the idea of the Egyptian Mummy.
As I said in my previous post, of all the Universal monster movies that have now become Victorian Gothic horror staples The Wolf Man (1941) and The Mummy (1932) are the only two not based on any existing Victorian novel. John L Balderston wrote the screenplay for The Mummy based on an idea about Cagliostro being resurrected and his own experience as a journalist covering the opening of the tomb of Tutankhamen and the subsequent media frenzy relating to the 'curse'. So again, like the werewolf, there's a vacancy for a good Victorian Mummy story...
It had to be set in the middle-east and I knew that Dr. Watson served in the Second Afghan War (Yes, I'm a confirmed Sherlock Holmes nerd) so I had a potential setting and I liked the idea of it being set during a conflict. I immediately thought of a scene from Ben Hur where he visits his mother and sister in a leper colony in Israel and it hit me that lepers were a lot like mummies- wrapped in bandages, slow and shambling, skin distorted with wounds. To make it more socially conscious it made sense to have lepers being mistreated and maybe a soldier (the narrator) leading an uprising against the colony- I pictured the lepers trudging towards the guards in waves like a zombie apocalypse- perfect! But why would the soldier be there? I thought of a POW camp and then decided to combine the two- a leper colony being used temporarily to house POW's. After a bit of wiki-research I discovered a conflict in Egypt in 1882 where British troops lost so that would fit nicely as my framing. I decided pretty early on owing to the subject matter that I would make it serious, not sensational- it's hard to maintain that in a story when really you can write whatever you want so why should you care? It's about not alienating your audience I guess, but it is a challenge...
It made sense to make the story the same length as The Wolf of Whitechapel. Once I'd started writing, I came up with a vampire concept, a Frankenstein one and two other 'Universal' ones. If I have time they're all next on my list (I'm writing one of them now) and the final goal would be to bring them all together, Avengers style, in one much longer story (a novel?)! So this is kind-of my own 'Marvel Cinematic Universe'!
I hope you enjoy and are convinced by this one, don't be afraid to give feedback so I can learn for my future writing...
B A Jones 20/07/2014
