ULDATE 87 (4/2/22): Regarding April Fools Day… GOTCHA!

Alright, time to come clean. 😆

Yesterday, I took to Twitter, Facebook, and Patreon to announce that a newly revamped version of ”Godzilla: Chapter 1” had just been published.

Here’s what I said:

The GNP is proud to present an all-new, revamped edition of the very first chapter of GODZILLA (1954)!

This was the first content published for the project over four years ago, and I’ve come a long way as a writer since then. I’ve wanted to go back and polish this chapter for a while now, and this is my first attempt at updating my older work.

This is something I’ve never tried before, so definitely let me know what you think after you’ve checked it out.

This post was accompanied by a link that appeared to lead to this new version of Chapter 1, and over the course of 12 hours, nearly three-dozen people clicked it. [Insert evil laugh here]

The true nature of the post was pretty obvious to those who then clicked the link, but for those who didn’t, this “all-new, revamped” chapter was obviously my contribution to yesterday’s April Fools Day shenanigans.

April Fools has been a fun tradition here at the GNP nearly since its inception. From tricking people into thinking I was starting a Godzilla 2014 novelization to writing an entire funny short story in 2020, good-natured pranks are part of what makes interacting with readers so fun! I’ve never wanted to do anything mean or too off the wall; humorous tricks and all-around goofiness are my style. And this year’s prank was definitely goofy.

Basically, when the link was clicked, what readers found was a “broken” version of GODZILLA’s first chapter, completely messed up and full of formatting, grammatical, spelling, and word-choice errors. If they made it all the way to the bottom, a funny gif awaited them.

So yeah, in case you’s still a bit confused (based on some messages I got, plenty of people were a bit baffled by this seemingly inept version of the chapter suddenly popping up), the page is 100% NOT a new-and-improved version of the chapter, and as of right now, I have no intention of ever completely rewriting older work. This was just a goof, and if you were one of the readers who clicked the link, I hope it gave you a chuckle!

As with all my previous April Fools pranks, I’ll be leaving the link to the joke version of the chapter live (but with a changed name to avoid confusion). And don’t worry, the original “Godzilla: Chapter 1” is still intact on its own page, and can still be accessed via the usual links on the website.

Thanks for being good sports, and if you fell for this prank, then, well…

GOTCHA!

Here’s the broken chapter, preserved for posterity.