Writing and Dracula

It was a dark and stormy night.

I came across a children's science book that was badly edited. I'm not sure what was up with that. The tone was conversational, and I think that must have turned off the editor's editing abilities. I'm still shocked that they mixed up the word "subsumed" and "sublimated" to describe what dry ice does.

In different news, I have a manuscript pending with the Wordos. It's an idea and milieu story, so it feels a little slow to me. Or maybe it feels like a game campaign log. I like the setting, and I like my main character, but I'm not sure if I've made them shine enough to make the story work. I expect the manuscript will be torn to shreds, so that should make it easier to spot the weak spots.

I'm currently working on a manuscript that I'd run out of steam with. At the time of abandonment, I thought it was a horrible mess, but going back to it, it is not as confused and horrific as I thought it was. It's a vampire story in the same vein (heh) as Stoker; no sparkly vampires here. What had made me put it down for a while was making the vampire character seem real. The trick is to keep the Stoker aspects clear but not worn out. The challenge for me is to understand how Dracula's existence would have been a horrific inversion of the Christian Eucharist to Stoker's victorian readers, and translate that into something a modern reader can identify with while still keeping a fantasy victorian feel.

Maybe I can make my Dracula a poor editor of children's science books.