Writing in Progress

I've permanently shelved The Killer's Killer as a movie because, well, it is very hard to do a suspense-horror film that goes towards the gory and shocking side without it just being torture-kill-porn. I don't want to do Hostel. I don't want to do Martyrs. I don't want to do a story that is just a framework for hanging meat that used to be living human flesh on. In fact, I'd sign a pledge to never write any such script if anyone wanted to form such an organization that would encourage abstinence from that genre.

Would that every writer would.

I'm working on a Blake Snyder-inspired story. Not about Blake, but about a subject he tossed out in Save the Cat when discussing mumbo-jumbo and what audiences will accept. Yes, vampires AND aliens. So far, the aliens are more interesting to me because they can be truly different without needless questioning. Vampires used to be human, so other than needing blood and not liking sunlight, what excuse do they have for becoming lecherous sadistic bastards overnight? I go the other way with my vampires; they are simply everyday folk with different issues.

Taking my own advice, I'm writing the novel and then condensing a script, MAYBE. It's a big maybe because I'm not sure anyone will want to do it and if the novel gains any sort of positive response, I'm unlikely to relinquish the slightest control. I have a certain idea in my head of how they are and what they are like, these characters of mine, and I write based on that. Besides that, I see it more as a television series than a movie. Why? It has a lot of stuff to cover.

I am exploring bisexuality, infertility, slavery, social-individual relations, cultural clashing, sexual maturation, friendship and love across species, and more. One of the most important characters is a hedonistic mad scientist sort whose species are true hermaphrodites, another is a formerly childless but now foster parent to a child from another species entirely, and that son of hers is several hundred years old but is developmentally equivalent to a human teen, one of whom he has become infatuated with.

The vampires are less fun, but that's only because they are more normal. They are Stoker-type vampires in that they can exist in sunlight, but other than that nothing is mystical about them. They move fast, they're strong, and very smart only because they are... wait for it... the result of a contagion from off-world. As a matter of fact, that contagion is continuing to spread across the galaxy as an army of ghoul-like aliens from various races attacks and destroys world after world.

I condensed into this two other storylines regarding a peaceful alien species and their one-time occupiers, as well as the psychics from DEMO on whose campus the house is found the previously covered alien outpost. Now, I think I have enough in one story to make it worth working on. IF I can stop rewriting chapters.