Easter Eggs

We wanted to take a moment to talk about Easter Eggs. No, not the kind you dye and then hide outside or in your home and hope the kids find them all. Not even the plastic ones that you can stuff with candy or other goodies. What we are referring to here is what Merriam Webster defines as “a hidden feature in a commercially released product (such as software or a DVD)” or sometimes as “a usually subtle callback included to please fans.”

Since our very first book (Unremarkable) we have included Easter Eggs in our stories. We both love it when a book, TV show, or movie includes an Easter Egg in the story –  something that only the most dedicated of fans might catch. We think of an Easter Egg as a subtle nod between creator and fan, like two people nodding at each other across a crowded room to acknowledge something only they noticed. It’s a shared experience between author and reader. Plus, it allows us to have some fun with our stories.

We have lost track of all of the Easter Eggs that we have included in our books. (And Geoff would be hard pressed to recall them all without rereading the books.) But we’ve had a few that we thought were fun, and some of them are pretty deep cuts.

In Unremarkable, when Saul is being questioned by Agents Truesdale and Wright, Saul refers to them as the “Government’s fearless vampire killers” which is a nod to the 1967 movie Fearless Vampire Killers staring Jack MacGowran and Sharon Tate. The movie is a humorous look at vampires and vampire hunters, and we liked having Saul refer to the two agents in this way. In Untouchable, in the scene where Capone is hosting a dinner for all of the vampires working under him, the mob boss makes a side remark that he had “wanted to give a little speech about baseball and teamwork, but I figure we’re all too sophisticated for such a trite metaphor.” That is a nod to the movie, The Untouchables (starring Kevin Costner, Sean Connery, and Robert De Niro as Capone) where Capone beats a man to death using a baseball bat at a fancy dinner.

Even in the Constable Inspector Lunaria Adventures we have included a few Easter Eggs. Most are related to Dungeons & Dragons, as the inspiration for the books came out of our D&D campaign settings. In Wrath of the Fury Blade, Reva and Ansee have a conversation about plays they have seen, and they mention two plays, Scourge of the Slavelords and The Keep on the Borderlands. Both of these are AD&D adventure modules.

Probably our most Easter Egg-y book is our forthcoming Flint Dagger novella, Dr. Gnoll. That one is chock full of nods and callbacks to all sorts of things, from James Bond movies, other spy series, music, to a lot more D&D content. Since Dr. Gnoll is more humorous than our other books, that allows us to play with ignoring (or just breaking) the fourth wall with the reader, and gives us more chances to slip in a whole slew of Easter Eggs.

We hope that you have noticed some of the Easter Eggs we have hidden among our stories. Let us know if you’ve spotted any