Sadly, I must admit that I have not had a chance to touch Dark Medicine this week. I do not like being behind, but life forces reprioritization. For details, please see the Coffee With David blog posted this week.

The re-plotting is going much better than I had expected. I left off with a new twist on one of the places I had made a misstep on. Also, the changes throw the characters into new dilemmas that will let the original plot line still exist but cross several books. I wish I could share with my readers here the details of what I am doing—I would make a lousy magician as I always want to say “see, here is what I am doing”—but I can’t.

My goal has not changed. I still intend to have Dark Medicine re-rough drafted by the end of February.

Thank you for reading and please visit www.davidalanlucas.com for information on the blogs, stories, poems, and articles I write.

The long awaited moment has come. I have taken Dark Medicine out of the tomb. I have blown off the dust from the manuscript and plugged in an iv of blood into it—ok, a little vampire humor. As you may have read in my blog on The Guardians, I have completed the first draft of that novel. In this rewrite I am going to completely rewrite this novel using the same method as I used to write The Guardians.

If I didn’t already describe what happened in the original draft of Dark Medicine, let me address it here: The story was too complex, with too many subplots to be held in one novel. Looking at the plot and the draft, I really set out to write five or seven novels and somehow make it into one. Well, I am learning from my mistakes on that.

Now for the vampire to come from his tomb and continue his quest; for the Levreau family to face its multiple troubles; and for much more to occur. Stay tuned for how this will all turn. My goal is to have a new rough draft by the end of February.

Let me warn everyone, the new writing method may have me finished in that time, but I will not have anything ready for a comment draft until closer to the summer.

Thank you for reading and please visit www.davidalanlucas.com for information on the blogs, stories, poems, and articles I write.

Assuming The Guardians 1st draft is finished sometime this weekend, I could begin rewriting Dark Medicine in the next 92 hours, I am excited to get back to this story that will not die. I know that I will be completely rewriting the story and this knowledge makes me wonder how Dan Curtis felt when he re-imagined his successful gothic television series Dark Shadows. In the 1960’s, Curtis created a show very unique for its time period—a daytime television show with ghosts, witches, other paranormal activity, and a remorseful vampire. Does the remorseful vampire sound familiar? Of course it does. Curtis introduced the idea and most of this kind of character have been influenced by Curtis’s creation.

Dark Shadows ran on television originally from June 27, 1966 to April 2, 1971 when, as Curtis explained in an interview, the story lines ran out. As he has admitted, if the writing talents of people like Stephen King and others had been available at the time, the stories may not have ended. After the run on television, Curtis made a few movies of the cult classic.

In 1991, Dan Curtis re-imagined his series in a short run. This was the version I originally saw. The 1991 version moved faster, the special effects were great for its time period. The second run was killed by the Gulf War, as Americas focus was on the war. However, having now watched the original on DVD, I believe the newer run was not as well written.
This knowledge of what happened to Dark Shadows lurks in the back of my mind. I want to re-imagine Dark Medicine to fix problems in the plot and the characters, but I do not want it to lose the gothic saga that the original first draft contained. This fear does not stop me from writing it—it remains as a reminder, a ghost, haunting my mind as I prepare to bring Alexandre Levreau back to life from his eternal imprisonment. Hopefully, with my next entry, I will be able to share how the new draft proceeds.

Thank you for reading and please visit www.davidalanlucas.com for information on the blogs, stories, poems, and articles I write.

The days are counting down to when I will restart working on this novel again. When? Depends on when I am finished with the first draft of the Guardians, but I am still cautiously indicating February or March. As I indicated in my last blog, the original first draft was too long and too complicated for one novel and I will be separating the story in to at least two novels. This reengineering of the story will require that I will have to rewrite large portions of the narrative to have the two (or multiple) novels function as stand alone on their own novels as well as a series together.

While working on the Guardians, I have been trying something new with my writing. I actually discuss this new method in my blog Coffee with David (updated 12/23/09). Assuming that what I have been doing with the Guardians can be done with Dark Medicine, I do not believe that Dark Medicine will take too long to write a new draft.

I realize I am being hopeful as normally I can write a first draft of a novel in 3 months while juggling a normal outside of writing workload and Dark Medicine took much longer to write than 3 months, but I am going to shoot for a new draft to be completed by May, if not sooner.

Thank you for reading and please visit www.davidalanlucas.com for information on blogs, stories , articles, and poems that I write.

As I work on another work, my mind keeps returning to the fictional town of St. Croix and the dilemma of the novel I have been writing. After a lot of thought and blogging (thank you to my readers for following along with this) I have come to a conclusion that Dark Medicine should be broken up. The plot was too heavy and I have an army of characters, each with their own plot to play out. Once I have finished writing my Sci-Fi novel The Guardians, I am going to rewrite Dark Medicine, breaking out the story now into separate parts—almost taking a page of advice from Dan Curtis.

One aspect of the story that will actually guide the segmenting of the story is the journey of the vampire Alexandre Levreau. The concept of the his story line was an Odyssey to a degree. Like Homer’s Ulysses, he is trying to find a way home. In Dark Medicine, after being freed, he finds himself confronted with things that keep him from going home and that is how I will segment the story.

New work will begin on this in the next few months. However, the name of this blog will change in the future to reflect the change.

Thank you for reading and please visit www.davidalanlucas.com for information on the stories and blogs I write.