Dracula Blogged

Dracula returns this week

The Draculablog resumes this week.  We should start tomorrow with the dedication and prefatory note.
Jonathan Harker starts his journal on Wednesday.

Dracula blogging for 2006

Based on much discussion, commenting, and brooding, I've decided to rerun the Dracula blog this year, expanded into a multimedia variorum edition.  I'll post more, here, of course, as May approaches, but wanted to note that as this blog's first post of 2006.

In the meantime, enjoy this version of  "Dracula's Guest".  It's a sample of machinima, the genre of filmmaking using computer games.  This one was created using The Movies. 

We've been posting and discussing machinima at Infocult.

(via BoingBoing)

The end of the Count, 2005

And with that the novel comes to an end.  The Count's reign is at last over, and the heroes return safely home to happiness... or is it, and will they? 

It's a bit breathtaking to realize we started this project back in early May.  Many thanks are do to our kind, thoughtful, attentive readers, who have by themselves made this project into an exercise in collective intelligence, a global Gothic seminar. 

So what next?  We've been discussing that question in comments (like here, here, and here).  Some options, not in any order:

• Publish a list of sequels.
• Cease the blog for the indefinite future.
• In 2006, re-run the novel as is, on the same schedule, with corrections to errors, and the comments slate clear for new readings.
• In 2006, run a variorum edition of the novel, adding expanded textual notes, alternative texts, hints from Stoker's manuscripts, and so on.
• Add multimedia, now and/or in 2006.  This can include images, maps, sound files, video (depending on copyright), as well as descriptions of same.
• Apply the blog approach to another appropriate Gothic text.  Any suggestions for an epistolary or otherwise chronologically-apt subject?  Imagine what we could learn, and share.
• Apply social software more broadly.  I wonder what wiki projects could unfold, such as a collaborative commentary on a text, or a joint resource.  From a different angle, I've gotten a few requests to reach back to my multimedia classes and my family's media production history and start podcasting Gothic stories, for instance. 

Please comment.  This is a fine, very Dracula-ish moment to take advantage of emergent technologies on behalf of the Gothic tradition.

About this blog project

About this blog, updated:

I would like to use this post, along with this category of posts, as the main "About" resource for the blog.  I'm going to try to keep notes and comments about the blog to comments, along with some few edits to this post.  Posts to the main page will be remain largely Stoker's content.
Partly this is for technical reasons, as Typepad prefers to have one single "About" page for multiple blogs on one domain, and I'm keeping that one for general information.  Partly this is for design purposes, since I'd like to keep the blog's main page focused on the novel.

I'd like to repeat my many thanks to this blog's readers.  Thanks as well to those who have posted or linked to the project from elsewhere, and to our numerous commentators.  First-time readers' reactions to their progress through the novel are grand, and hereby encouraged.

Speaking of comments, please offer URLs whenever possible.  Typepad's comments feature supports HTML, so the A HREF tag works fine.  Post the URL into the comment box, and Typepad will make it live.
Looking back over a month of comments, it's striking to see so many web resources already added.. The Web has a growing amount of Dracula-useful documents.  One site, the extraordinary Wikipedia, is a good spot for research, and a fine one for us to contribute to.
Explorations of Dracula-related texts are very welcome.  This includes references within the novel, possible influences on Stoker, scholarly literature, subsequent vampire stories, and versions in other media (film, tv, games, radio, comics).
Concerning spoilers, I think the comments look enough like footnotes that most first-time readers will approach them with some caution.  It might be a good idea to write about "later" sections of the novel with some circumspection, even dating passages so readers can look ahead once those parts have been posted. 

A note on design: I've kept the blog layout as simple as possible, largely in order to focus readers and posters on the text itself.  It should be easy to print pages directly from the browser; copying and pasting chunks of the novel to another program, like Word, is also technologically gentle..  Additionally, the blog's basic XML markup should allow easy exporting to desktop or disk.  Perhaps in a subsequent project (May-November 2006?)  we could integrate multimedia documents into the larger blog, and see how the experience differs.

Comments? Suggestions?  Let's keep meta-feedback to comments on this post, if we can.

Onward!  The Count is on his way to England...

The novel starts tomorrow

We'll start Dracula tomorrow.  To prepare the way, or whet the appetite, the next post will include the novel's dedication and preferatory note.

Draculablog launches

This blog will publish Bram Stoker's Dracula for the next six months.  Individual pieces of the novel will appear on the calendar dates indicated in the text, starting with Jonathan Harker's May 3rd Bistriz journal entry, and finishing up with November 6 and the final Note.

I'm planning on two categories of posts.  First, and primarily, will be the novel's text.  Secondarily I'll post about the novel, or reflections on this project. 

Comments are most welcome!