Exclusive Secret Reveal! (For those who want early sneak peeks.)
about 3 years ago
– Tue, Mar 21, 2023 at 11:44:50 AM
Hello friends,
Wishing you all a bountiful vernal equinox. Though the Spring is when things begin to get bad for our friends in 1890s England, I think it's when they're just going to start to get good for us. I can feel a hopeful tug of unholy magic in the air.
As for us, we're still pushing along. We've solved a number of sourcing issues in the last few weeks, at least one of which was a huge stumbling block to getting this project figured out. We still have a long road ahead of us, but finally we're starting to be able to see the finish line in distant sight. We're a long way from out of the tunnel, but we are starting to see some light at its end.
As promised, we want to continue this ongoing series of exclusive content drops. And as always, our recommendation for those of you who want to maintain the surprise of opening our edition, is not to look at these. We're not showing off our big wow moments, so you can take a look at what you're doing without being spoiled -- but if you want to go in totally fresh, please stop reading after the below promo message for our new Kickstarter campaign. (Which has a very Draculite ripped-from-a-fictive-reality quality! It even includes inserted typewritten sheets. Details below, and Dracula reveals safely hidden even further below.)
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Our newest ILLUMINATED EDITIONS is an illustrated an annotated edition of Carlo Collodi's PINOCCHIO from Mike Mignola and Lemony Snicket.
But really, it's even more than that.
This glorious volume contains more than fifty illustrations from Mignola and colorist Dave Stewart, building out Carlo Collodi's puppet-world and restoring the black humor and troubling magic of the original story -- and Snicket had included a full-text annotation in the form of dozens of inserted typewritten sheets -- paper-trail of a wild-eyed author, hellbent on encountering the utter strangeness and wonder of Collodi’s visionary tale, unafraid of its increasingly apparent and deeply troubling psychic toll. There at his trusty Smith Corona, swallowed whole by the strange magnetism of Collodi's words, Snicket fell into sort of fugue state, typing and retyping thousands of copies of his frantic, baffled notes, which he insisted on stuffing into each copy of the book.
Thus, our astonishing new Illuminated Edition: a volume burnishing and exploding the legacy of Collodi's strange, endlessly adapted -- and yet often misunderstood -- novel.
Hope a few of you might be interesting in joining our most recent madness.
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REPEAT: IF YOU WANT TO REMAIN TOTALLY UNSPOILED FOR THE CONTENTS OF DRACULA: THE EVIDENCE, STOP READING HERE!
WE SAID STOP!
.
.
.
Okay.
We warned you!
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Phew. It's just us now. We can finally speak freely.
The practice of death photography in the Victorian era, stretching into the early 20th century, was an odd and fascinating one. In the early days of photography, it was a popular tradition to pay tribute to the dearly departed with memorial images that ranged from restrained (simple religious images, funeral arrangements, etc) to somewhat ghoulish (photos of the dead propped up with their eyes open to make it appear as though they're still alive -- or sometimes even doing activities like playing cards or eating breakfast). There's a wonderful book on the topic called BEYOND THE DARK VEIL (gorgeously designed by our own Dracula partners at Headcase Design!) which delves deep into this topic.
The photos were usually silver gelatin prints, in which the image is reproduced by tiny silver particles suspended in a thin gelatin layer, which gave them a metallic sheen. They would then often be mounted on large, elaborately designed boards by the photography studios which produced them.
And we're not going to show you, just yet. For that, we'll have to wait until the book is released.
But we do want to share an incomplete glimpse one haunted item in our box set.
If you look closely, you can see some elements of the photograph photo behind the scrim of the tissue paper cover. What you see here is a very large and very heavy card stock board, with embossing and foil blocking, and a silvered photo mounted on it -- but you can't see the photo, because there's a tissue-thin printed sheet tipped onto it to protect the image behind
This is the back of the item. You can see the aged glue stains where the tissue sheets wraps over, to protect the photograph.
We're in love with the material nature of this thing, and cannot wait to share it with you in print.
Look out for another update coming soon. We're sorry once more for our ever-increasing delays, but things are (slowly, painfully) getting better.
Thank you all for your kindness, passion and excellence. Wishing you all dark and gorgeous dreams.
-The Bees
EXCLUSIVE: Preview of Dr. Seward's Diary Released
about 3 years ago
– Wed, Feb 15, 2023 at 01:59:33 PM
You can enter Dr. Seward's world here. It's only a snippet of the 5.5 hours of audio, but we think it's a thrilling taste.
More mystery to come, friends, as we push towards a finish.
May God have mercy on us all.
-Bees
Delays Persist, but Phonograph Previews Dropping Soon
about 3 years ago
– Mon, Jan 30, 2023 at 12:44:41 PM
Dearest, darkest darlings,
I hope 2023 finds you all happy and well. We write today, as so often seems to be the case, with some exciting news and some persistently persisting frustrations.
I'll rip the bandage off and say that due to the uncertainties around the current COVID situation in China (which is, as you've likely heard, now being tragically ravaged by pandemic again), we're probably going to face more delays over the next few months. I think, when you include timelines for manufacturing, shipping, customs and fulfillment, we're most likely now looking at a project which may stretch into the early part of 2024.
I know it must seem that these delays will never end, but we are pushing closer to a finish every day. And on that front, we have some plans to keep you all engaged and excited as time the calendar hurries along. We're going to start doing regular periodical drops of exclusive DRACULA: The Evidence content, for those that are interested to see the process behind the scenes as we move along. These sneak peeks will always be behind a link -- so those of you who hope to keep the project fresh, to be encountered anew when you receive your books and boxes in the mail, can just not click.
Our first drop, coming soon, will be a sneak preview of Doctor Seward's phonograph notes. We're only releasing a fragment -- roughly forty minutes of audio, including a section that is not to be included on any of three three vinyl records we're producing as part of this project. (We've produced a full four hours of Dr. Seward's notes, in sum, less than half of which will fit onto our actual physical records -- the full audio will be available only in digital format. So you can listen to our digital drop, and all the audio on the vinyl records will still be fresh and exclusive.)
The section we're releasing is the final bit of Dr. Seward's diary he's able to record before they leave England, Varna-bound on the Czarina Catherine, and he's forced to resort back to pen and paper, like some kind of barbarian. It also includes one of my favorite sections of the audio, when Dr. Van Helsing commandeers Seward's phonograph to leave a note -- a proto-voicemail, really -- for Jonathan Harker.
And please remember that as long as DRACULA: The Evidence is delayed, you'll be able to use code FRUSTRATION at beehivebooks.com for 20% off any of our published books. Hope that helps take the sting off.
Here's a TLDR:
- We're moving forward, but delays persist and may push through this year.
- We're going to be doing periodic drops of cool Dracula content from now until release.
- Bram Stoker seems to have invented voicemail.
- You can get 20% off any of our published books with discount code FRUSTRATION at beehivebooks.com.
Stay tuned for the audio drop, and for more exclusive custom content to come. We're in awe of the patience and understanding you've all shown us, and could not be more eager to make good on all of our promises to you all. Speaking for all of us, collectively, readers and publishers and authors and friends: 2023 is going to be our year.
Wishing you all deathless love in 2023,
The Bees
Long road ahead, but a major milestone passed!
over 3 years ago
– Fri, Dec 09, 2022 at 07:41:04 PM
Hello friends,
Still pushing forward on this mountain of a project. Our gratitude to you all for your patience and kindness is as endless as our ever-stretching timeline seems to be. We're a long way away still, but we continue to push forward, closer every day. This community has been amazing as we continue to move along.
One big milestone for us -- the digital Phonograph Edition of Doctor Seward's journal (which includes a surprise appearance by Dr. Van Helsing, which will be featured only on the complete digital version) is now complete! We're sending the audio tracks of the various vinyl records (three different discs, all with their own audio) off for their initial test pressings. This is a new world for us -- BB's first vinyl! We're so excited to hear the soft ambient crackle emanating our dear from John's lunatic asylum. (Have you ever wondered why Bram Stoker named two members of his main cast John/Jonathan? We certainly have.)
Which brings me to another question, one that we've been discussing internally.
Should we drop the digital edition of the audio soon? Or should we wait until the record is pressed, and drop it when we ship physical editions to our backers? I don't want to spoil anything -- as always, our impulse is to hold off -- but I do want you all to know that we're moving forward, and be able to see some of our progress as we push towards closing this thing out in 2023.
One other option is that we could release a substantial section or two, but leave the rest for later. Or we could do something really strange, like host a one-time live-stream of the complete audio for those interested, but hold off on sending out any downloads. (I like this idea because it's a chance for us all to get together.)
We've put together an informal Google poll to gauge our backers' opinions on this, but you're also welcome to sound off in the comments below. We appreciate the dialog, and consider ourselves so lucky to have such an engaged readership.
A new year is coming. We're convinced that a wonderfully dark destiny awaits us in the twenty third year of the twenty first century. Slowly and painstakingly, we're getting there. We're so lucky you're on this journey with us.
Yours eternally,
The Bees
p.s. Don't forget that DRACULA backers are entitled to a special discount on our web store -- use code FRUSTRATION at beehivebooks.com for 20% off anything currently in print. If you order today you should still get books in time for Christmas!
The Witching Season
over 3 years ago
– Thu, Oct 27, 2022 at 01:00:45 AM
Dear friends,
October is the witching season, and we always reap its dark harvest here in the Beehive. Things are really beginning to come together now. Dr. Seward's recordings are finished, and we're getting the files ready to send them off for our first test pressings. We have a whole wide array of items going off to our printer to create initial dummies for us to photograph for the hardcover edition of the book. Our wonderful designers at Headcase are cranking out new stunning materials every day, and we're finalizing production on item after item.
Unfortunately, we're still not ready to commit to a particular timeline for delivery. There are still so many moving pieces around materials and shipping and our own internal production processes -- and we've been told by an overwhelming majority of our readers not to rush this thing, and to take the time required to make it the project we know it can be. All I can say right now is that we're moving closer and closer to clarity on a timeline, and that it will be a while, still.
I have many, many things I could share with you in the way of hints and teases, but to be totally honest I'm a little worried about spoiling the joy of the project with too many hints and peeks behind the scenes. If we had been able to deliver this project on our original timeline, I thought we could have stuck to our original plan to show next to nothing, and let it all be a glorious and terrifying surprise.
But I do feel I must share at least some small hints, so you can see that we're working, and at least hint at the marvelous things we're creating along the way. We don't want to lose your faith.
So! I'm sharing a small section of one of the newspapers we're producing. There are three different newspapers included in DRACULA: The London Dailygraph, The Westminster Gazette, and the Pall Mall Gazette. The last two are actual British newspapers, while the Dailygraph seems to be a fictionalized version of the Daily Telegraph. We of course need to produce not only the articles featured in Stoker's text, but also the accompanying headlines and text from the rest of the tearsheets. In order to do this, we adhered to one of our guiding principles of this project: verisimilitude whenever possible. So we dove into various archives and sourced the actual newspapers from the relevant dates of the articles in Dracula.
And what do you know -- one of the newspapers had an article about ghosts and spirit mediums on the front page.
So, once we added the Hampstead mystery of the strange lady menacing children, this becomes one of the spookiest above-the-fold front pages in the history of newsprint.
We honestly considered cutting the article, because it feels a little too on-the-nose -- as though we were populating the paper with supernatural events to fit the Dracula world. But really it felt too good and juicy to cut out, like we would be denying kismet.
So, I thought, at the risk of spoiling something fun from our set (should I stop doing this?? I kind of want to stop doing this, but I want to keep you all on board), I thought I'd share a section of the article, a genuine feature from the Westminster Gazette on Monday, 25 September, 1893. (Featuring guest appearances by Buffalo Bill and Madame Blavatsky, two of the strangest and most colorful characters of the 1890s.)
Old newspapers were much weirder and more fascinating than the ones we're left with today.
Look at that beautiful frayed trim along the edges, designed by Headcase to be die-cut into a perfect tattered shape.
Anyway -- we've got lots of more like to share, though eager not to over-share.
In other Dracula news, I (Beehive publisher Josh O'Neill) recently attended a wonderful event arranged by the Rosenbach library, which has Bram Stoker's notes and papers around the creation of Dracula. They hosted an all-night reading of the book to celebrate the novel's 125th anniversary. The reading took about 18 hours, with dozens of different readers, of which I was one. I took the stage at midnight, and read the section in which Dr. Seward finds Lucy's asleep in bed with her mother's lifeless body.
This was the venue, where there were cocktails and coffee and lots of folks sacked out in sleeping bags:
It was an extremely weird and kind of magical event. I hope the Rosenbach decides to do it again.
In any case. Just wanted to drop a line and keep you all updated on our doings. Deepest apologies for our continued delays, and thank you for the kindness, patience and passion you've all showed us along the way. We're so grateful to have you as readers.
While we've got you -- consider checking out our new live Kickstarter campaign, for a series of gorgeous woven blankets by great illustrators!
Thank you as always, friends. Wishing you a weekend full of spirits,
The Bees
