Blood Lust

Matty, 

This was fun. Wasn't sure where you were going with this at first but figured it would be somewhere along the lines you went. Still, a little different which kept it interesting. 

One thing I noticed you had characters crying a lot. I mean not really but you tagged their dialouge with he cried. The simple exclamation point or punction would suffice. Maybe he/she said. When you use cried instead of cried out(which still isn't great, but I think that's what you were implying) it makes me ask myself as a reader why that character would be crying. If tears aren't really strolling down there face when they say it then I'd avoid using that tag. 

Other than that the prose was good. It flowed well and the pacing was real good too. 

I only had a tiny bit of a problem with your plot. I liked it a lot but was confused with the ending. So this woman has been steeling blood for her mom. Oh wait, she's just testing the blood to find an organ? So was she going to steal his? He was offering blood at the end. I guess my main confusion is, if she needs the blood, then drugged, drunk blood wouldn't help much. My conclusion was she was going to donate her own organ but still needed blood. Stealing it the way she did wouldn't work. She should know if she's a doctor. So was her plan to get him to volunteer all along? I guess I'd be a bit more satisfied if I knew what she were up to. But all in all, it was very entertaing. Nice work and good luck. 

--JR--

Not bad, but I'm looking for a more tension, suspense, and intrigue in a mystery.  Read easily and clearly, so complaints with the skill, but the plot needs some juice (no pun intended).

Is there a reason why some paragraphs are indented and other are not?  Feel like I might be missing out on something...

Hi Matty,

This is a pretty good idea. Parts of this read like it's a first draft that could do with polishing, and there are one or two awful lines that I've flagged up in the LBL and all but begged you to cut, but overall I enjoyed this. You make good use of the open ending, leaving it to the reader's imagination whether or not the proceedure goes horribly wrong.

I'd also rethink the blood transfusion idea a little bit. I've put this in the LBL too, but draining blood out of someone's neck is not as controllable or easy as most vampire films/stories would have us believe. If she used a needle and went deep enough to get the sample she described out of him, it would probably have had more of an effect on him than it did. Plus if she'd then drained out what's in those bags you show at the end, I think his hangover would have been worse.

Now that I think of it, you can't donate blood in real life if you've been drinking because it might have an adverse affect on the person who receives it if there's alcohol content. Considering she's giving this to a woman who's got liver problems, I don't think she'd allow him to either drink or be drunk before she carried out her plan. She'd have to sedate him to stop the whole thing from waking him (and you hint that she did because he fell asleep so easily) but the drinking thing might be a problem. Unless of course she was that desperate for the blood, or even wanted her mother to have blood with a nip of booze in it because it helped the withdrawal (don't know if that would work - perhaps you should actually ask a doctor about these details as research, if you get chance. That kind of research might enrich this story.)

I think the build-up in this story is very obvious and doesn't create much tension though. The story's strength lies in its surprise ending, but until then I felt like I knew what was going to happen. News article at the start + trip to a club + 'girl of my dreams' = uh-oh, she's gonna get him! The whole forumla's a bit tired. Perhaps you should actually cut the news excerpt from the start and change this story's 'Story Description' so that it doesn't mention vampires at all. That's the easiest fix. Lead us through a mystery, then when your guy sees he's got bire marks, and we've had all the gothic detail from Letitia's house, then the word 'vampire' can come out to play.

LBL attached. Hope this helps. -C.

This was an interesting idea, and a nice twist on the crime genre. The detail and setup was nicely conceived, although there were a few issues with your prose, for example:

​Around midnight Steve suggested we went to the Subway Club. The Subway Club was a dark dingy nightclub, which played alternative and heavy music until 6 am.

That could easily be simplified to something like:

Around midnight Steve suggested we go to the Subway Club; a dark, dingy hole that played alternative and heavy music until 6 am.

I liked the media hype about vampires, suggesting this girl has been doing this a lot. The chat up scene was good, although a little more show and a little less tell would benefit you here. Your narrator turning up with garlic and a stake was quite amusing, and her reaction to it was great. The ending reveal felt a little rushed, but was a good idea. I figured she wasn't a vampire but I didn't see your ending coming. A bit of work and you'll have something brilliant.

Hey Matty,

This was a cute enough story, but I agree with some of the others that it feels under developed and more like a first draft.

I liked a lot of Marshall's voice, but at times it seemed to wavered and become non descript. He was strongest to me when he was at the bat with his friends, but when it was him and Leticia, his voice suffered. I think you need to try to develop Marshall and Leticia some more, give them a more define voice. Right now, Leticia is driven solely by the plot, so she doesn't seem like a fully realized character. I was also expecting Sian to have more of an impact considering how much you focus on her in the beginning.

A lot of the story right now feels like fluff that can be cut off. I would completely get rid of the beginning paragraph and the whole idea that Marshall is watching the television and thinking back to the previous day. It really doesn't add much to the story, and all that information can be dropped through dialogue, which might seem more natural. There really isn't much tension in this story right now, and I find that at least for me, that's often the case with stories that start off with the MC reminiscing. Not saying it can't be done, but in this case, you might be better served just to keep us all in the moment.

A few more things you can cut off:

The beer and conversation flowed easily. A couple who had lived in our shared house a few years before joined us late, and it was inevitable that it was going to be a big night.

“Hey Marshall,” grinned the skinhead on the door. “Must be payday, good to see you!”
“Are we that predictable?” I asked, taking his outstretched hand.
“Like clockwork mate. Busy tonight, have a good one.”
“Cheers mate!”

Things like this don't really add much to the plot and drag the story down. In fact, why not just start them off in the second club that Leticia hangs around with and put most of their dialogue there?

The tought situation of your story is that you push the vampire angle so strong early on, that my initial reaction was to try to figure out how this was NOT going to be a vampire story. I'm almost tempted to say that you should drop that angle entirely- you can still have Leticia do what she's doing, but let the reader come to the conclusion about vampirism, rather than merely telling us about it.

There also needs to be more tension. I think right now the tension is suppose to lie on whether Marshall is indeed turning or not, but like I said, I wasn't expecting that to happen at all, so that felt flat to me.

I did like when he tries to confront her with the stake and cross, and wished you would have extended that out a bit more. It's funny stuff. You could even add more tension here by having the reader wonder if he's going to kill her or not (which is where I originally thought you were heading with this).

My advice would be to get rid of all the extraneous stuff and focus on Leticia and Marshall. As I said, this is a good start that will hopefully grow as you revisit it.

Hi Matty,

I agree about taking out the vampire newscast bit at the beginning. It'll let readers piece it together themselves.

You could also have the narrator come to that conclusion early on, too. When he sees her at the club, maybe think to himself that she must be the vampire - otherwise why would she be talking to a schlub like him? - and then the rest of the story becomes a "Nah, she can't be...or could she?" tale, giving the twist even more impact.

And if you went that way, you could spend more time dwelling on his panic the morning after - will his friends know? Will he turn? (Etc.)

You've got a good idea here with lots of potential.