A year ago to this day, I proposed a collaborative project revolving around the aftermath of the events that take place in the game Vampire: The Masquerade – Bloodlines. It started off as something small and casual, but as a few new writers joined and we became more ambitious, it took off and became something with much more depth than I think any of us expected.
The story was an original work with each of multiple writers working together and off each other in order to create a complex, multi-dimensional story. As previously mentioned, it took place following the events of Bloodlines, incorporating nearly every single Bloodlines NPC as well as adding in an impressive collection of new characters and storylines. World Of Darkness and VtM Bloodlines fans, as well as anyone just interested in vampires that don't sparkle should find this a fun and enjoyable read.
After an impressive nine months of work, the project finally fell apart as each of the writers involved began to depart, abandoning the story after writing out 12 and a half very lengthy, fully detailed and expansive Chapters, each of which spanned one entire night. It was saddening, but with little support, the project was inevitably doomed to conclude early and leave countless creative and interesting plotlines never to see a conclusion.
Instead of letting this story, which so many skilled, creative individuals devoted so much time and effort into writing, get lost in the vastness of the internet, I've decided to begin posting the entire story on both my Deviant Art page and here. Of course, I will be leaving in the names of the original posters for each particular section of the story so as to give credit where credit is beyond due. These names are the screen names that the writers used on Myth Weavers, where we regularly met to work on the story. I will not alter the story in any way aside from, if I have the time, some minor proofreading and editing, and as such there may be errors in the text. It's important to understand that we wrote this more so for enjoyment than to create a perfect piece of literature. As such, it would be impossible for me to correct every single mistake.
I am not going to provide a background for anything having to do with the World of Darkness, Vampire: The Masquerade or the events that took place in Bloodlines. All of that information, if so desired, can be found on the internet with a bit of searching. That said, this story does a good job at making such prior information not required. Yes, certain references and words may be lost to you if you haven't dabbled in World of Darkness lore, but it should hardly prove detrimental to enjoying the story. Furthermore, for those of you who do, in fact, have knowledge of the World of Darkness, we do take some creative liberties here and there within the story. However, for the most part, all of the writers tried to stay true to established lore and story.
If anyone has any questions on the story and such, I will be more than happy to answer them when I get a chance. Feel free to contact me by any means. I always try to message back anyone who makes a comment on the things I post.
It's probably also worth mentioning the style in which we chose to go about writing this. Each writer was free to create any characters they wished. Their main characters were the characters they wrote from the perspective of for various scenes. At first, we decided that in writing certain sections, we could write for other writers' characters by treating them as NPCs, that is, writing in actions and dialogue that our main character witnesses their character performing, but nothing more. Later on, we developed a system where writers were able to keep complete control of their main characters, even in scenes that were written from the perspective of another writer's character. We did this by having writers alternate as they wrote out particular scenes, so as to keep the integrity of their characters.
I hope that makes sense, but if it doesn't, you'll probably be able to figure it out after reading for a while. It's not a huge deal. I simply thought it worth mentioning in concerns to character consistency at the beginning of this story and how the style changes slightly later on. Regardless, enjoy the story and even if, for whatever reason, you can't get into it at first, I really urge you to read through a few nights because it really does start to become something amazing later on. It's amazing to see how the characters interact and develop through this text and while I may be biased, I truly think this proved to be one of the most entertaining and enthralling things I have ever have the privilege both to work on and to read.
Author's Note: As I'm considering to only upload the rest of Nights 1 and 2 up here, due to time restraints on my behalf, I'm going to give the link to out Forum on Myth Weavers. If I had more fan support, I would probably consider more about uploading more nights here and my Deviant Art page. Furthermore, more support would really help motivate us to finish up the story in some sort of fashion, so by all means come by and show some support.
You can find the link on my Deviant Art page (a link to which is found on my profile here) or you can go to Myth Weavers and search for An Hour A Night, As The Vampire Bites.