My Brilliant Idea

Pride and Prejudice  and Zombies by Jane Austin and Seth Grahame-Smith was a stroke of genius. Argue all you want about whether or not the book is any good, you can’t deny the brilliance of the concept. This got me thinking – what if, instead of merely adding zombies to an existing property, an author took the best of two novels and wove them together with a few twists of his own to create an Entirely New Work of Fiction? I mean, it would be at least two times better than either of the originals, right?*

Here are the ideas I’ve had so far:

Great Expectations and the Art of Racing in the Rain, by Charles Dickens, Garth Stein & Stephen Parolini

Concept: Pup, an orphaned dog adopted by Mr. Joe Swift, begins a lifelong quest to discover his humanity; a quest measured by the exhilaration of success, the disappointment of deception and the ache of suffering, and that culminates in a dogged acceptance of his station in life.

Tender Is the Night of The Shining, by F. Scott Fitzgerald, Stephen King & Stephen Parolini

Concept: Danny “Redrum” Diver, A promising psychoanalyst, develops a drinking problem and is eventually forced by circumstance to trade his job at a swanky Swiss clinic for a job as caretaker of the Overlook Hotel where the ghost of a young actress he once slept with sends him into a maze of despair and his eventual frozen death.

The Sun Also Rises at Twilight, by Ernest Hemingway, Stephenie Meyer & Stephen Parolini

Concept: Aimless vampire Jake Barnes falls in love with the beautiful Lady Bella Ashley and follows her on a class field trip to Pamplona for the running of the bulls, where he spends most of his time in a bar drinking Bloody Marys and whining about his impotence.

Brilliant, right? Okay, so tell me your mash-up ideas. I promise I won’t steal them.

*Please note that I haven’t fully researched the legality of this brilliant idea. It is highly probably that copyright issues could impede my plan to make millions of dollars off of other people’s novels. In other words, don’t try this at home.