Bruce Witte's new satirical novel reimagines Dracula in 1998 Transylvania, where a disgraced actor and descendant of Vlad partners with a media mogul to turn Vlad's castle into a theme park called Draculand. The 250-page book blends satire, comedy, and spiritual themes, launching first as an ebook.
Chapters
This is Author to Author. I'm Tim Trott. This channel is about authors for authors. As a writer, I like to discover how other writers find their inspiration and motivation. Bruce Woody is a lifelong student of anthropology, science, religion, psychology, philosophy, and sociology. He began as a writer and producer of educational films for Encyclopedia Britannica and other educational film companies. From there, he went on to write and produce industrial and promotional videos for Standard Oil, United States Gypsum, Allstate Insurance, and several charitable organizations. Bruce is also the author of several children's books and the lead writer of 7 children's learning videos. In a moment, we'll find out what's next for Bruce Witty. Author to Author is supported by Cybershoot.com, the right host for your author website. Welcome to the program, Bruce Witte.
Hi, I'm glad to be here.
You began your career writing and producing educational films. Besides some children's books I'm aware of, you authored and served as lead writer for at least 7 published children's learning videos. Your more recent project is a novel with an interesting perspective on Dracula. So who is the audience for this book?
Well, um, people who like satire, people who like comedy, and people who are interested in learning some things about spiritual matters.
From the preview I've read, you clearly put a lot of research into this project. So what motivated your fascination with the Dracula legend?
Well, it wasn't so much the Dracula legend in itself but it was me having to work through a lot of issues in my life and try to find a meaning behind a lot of the apparent things that happen in the world. And Dracula to me, or at least Vlad the Impaler, really not, not so much Dracula, but Vlad the Impaler was someone that through my research I also learned that he had a lot of stuff to work through, and he did things because he was in a world that he felt he was compelled to do terrible things in order to survive.
Your setting is still Transylvania, but in a different time. What's going on with that?
Well, it's been updated to about 1998. And that's when the fall of communism basically started in Eastern Europe. And I felt this gave me an opportunity to say that the Romanian government was giving back up private property after the fall of communism. That opened the door to having the last descendant of Vlad the Impaler inheri— inherit Vlad's castle because the Romanians were giving everything back to previous owners. And that opened the door to converting the castle into a theme park, a capitalistic theme park. So that opened the doorway to the story.
Dracula buffs will think that you left out an important character, R.M. Renfield, except you didn't, did you?
No, in my book he's called Ravenswood.
Historical Dracula is a manifestation of Vlad the Impaler, as you mentioned, but this Dracula is not your average vampire. Are we giving too much away?
Uh, I don't think so. I don't think so. He still, uh, feeds off the life force of other people. It's just not blood now.
How many chapters and how many pages? Paperback, hardcover, ebook? What do you have in mind?
Well, it's going to start out as an ebook. I want to do a paperback version also. It's 250 pages at this point, and I think— oh, I forget the word count, but it's 250 pages.
How many other Dracula books have been published? I went through Goodreads and I found a large number.
Yeah, I really don't know the answer to that. I'm hoping that because it deals with Dracula in his form as Vlad the Impaler that I can benefit from the interest in Dracula as a whole that's out there.
Just to share what I found in some research: Goodreads lists over 1,000 books tagged as Dracula. WorldCat shows 5,000+ works referencing Dracula, though not all are novels. Vampire fiction as a whole reduces that, includes tens of thousands of books with Dracula mostly as an adapted figure. But I don't think any of them mention a theme park, so you've basically cornered the market.
Yeah, yeah, I'm hoping that will attract some people. And it was originally written as a screenplay, so what I did, I just, I hadn't ever written a novel before, so I thought, well, this might be an easier way to write a novel. I just try to convert an existing screenplay, and I think that allowed me to take the risk of actually writing it in novel form because I really never considered myself a novelist before this.
You've had some background in video production and there's a function called a logline. So if you, if this book were a movie, what would the logline read like?
Okay, well, here's a short, basically 3-sentence description of what the book is about. It's 1998, and a disgraced young actor who is also the last living descendant of Vlad the Impaler attempts to save his career by helping an unscrupulous media mogul turn Vlad's old castle into a Dracula-based theme park. Unfortunately, the local peasants, greedy Romanian oligarchs, and Vlad himself have different ideas. Everything goes wrong until everything is just right in this satirical novel about the nature of our material world and the reality of divine forgiveness.
Let's say you're a travel agent and you're promoting this fictional theme park that you've invented. What would the travel ad say?
Oh man, well, one of the subtitles of the book I was I was thinking of Draculand where nothing is unforgivable because that refers to the theme that even though the material world is pretty terrible and a lot of horrible things happen, because of the greater reality that surrounds everything, nothing ultimately is unforgivable that happens in this world.
I've got some ideas. How about Westworld meets Dracula? Come to the Dracula land where the snacks suck, literally. Pretty bad.
That's not too bad. That's not too bad. I'm sure I can use that in marketing somewhere.
Speaking of marketing, Goodreads, BookFunnel, Amazon ads— what's the plan?
Well, you know, uh, that's my next step. That's my next step to try and formulate a good plan. I'm not too knowledgeable in how to do that end of things, so that's my next step. But yes, definitely I plan to publish on Amazon first, and what I'd like to do is get— find a lot of people who would like to read the book before it's released and to have a review in in waiting, and then once I release the book, they can upload their reviews, and I think that would be a good starting point for me to try and get some traction on Amazon.
So what's next? More novels?
I don't, I don't really know. I mean, I have a couple of ideas for next novels, but I'm not sure how quickly I'm going to jump into that. I want to see how this works out and if I can get any traction and if I can generate any sales. And if that works, then I might start another novel. I mean, at this point I'm outlining another novel, but I'm not going to jump right back in. It requires a lot of work, a lot of sitting, and I'm looking forward to maybe getting outside for a while and doing things outside.
Other authors may be interested in knowing what kind of tools do you use? Novel Crafter, Sudowrite, Atticus, Reedsy Studio— what's your mainly— what's your tool of the trade?
No, none of those right now. What I try to do, I just try to read novels that are similar to mine or to ones I'm thinking of, or that I enjoy the writing style a lot and learn a lot from that. And I constantly rewrite. So I guess I consider myself more of a rewriter than a writer, actually. But yes, I should look into those, those programs for additional help, but I just haven't done that yet.
So you're working in Google Docs or Word?
Word.
Did you hire an editor or do you plan on hiring an editor? And how about the COVID design? Where did that come from?
Well, the COVID design so far I used Gemini artificial intelligence. I typed in on prompts what I wanted the COVID art to look like, and it fed back out a really, really good cover. So that's what I've done so far. I'm probably going to use that when I publish the ebook, but maybe when I go to the softcover I'll hire a professional to do a cover.
You talked about artificial intelligence. Do you use AI as a— for a cover, for a starter cover at least? Do you see AI as a threat to writers or a tool, or what perspective do you put on that, and what do you see as the future for AI?
Well, I think AI in certain industries, yeah, it's a real threat. I mean, if you're a copywriter or something like that, I think, yeah, that's something to be worried about. Novel writing, not so much, because I think, at least right now, AI usually spits out some pretty stereotypical kind of writing for novels that isn't very creative or doesn't show much depth or doesn't show much understanding of the problems people go through and the philosophy they might want to use to get through those problems. So I really don't see artificial intelligence as affecting good novel writing in the future.
The description I like to use is it's a 10-year-old who just discovered an encyclopedia and wants to brag about it, because a lot of it comes off that way. A lot of times you can spot the em dash, which shows up in translations, but the em dash is a dead giveaway when you see those.
Yeah, yeah. So I think novel writers, poetry writers, and people who are writing something with some deeper meaning to it don't have to worry too much about AI, at least not at this point.
If people want to reach you, where can they reach you?
I've got a special Draculand email. It's draculand@gmail.com. 98@gmail.com.
Thank you very much for being with us on Author to Author. Thank you for joining us for Author to Author. Please share this video with your friends on social media. Remember to click the like and subscribe buttons and click the bell so you'll be reminded when it's time for the next chapter of Author to Author.
