Dracula the Un-Dead

Appeared in the Toronto Globe and Mail

DRACULA AUTHOR’S DESCENDANT

JOSH WINGROVE

October 1, 2008

As a child, it was easy for Dacre Stoker to pick a Halloween costume.

Mr. Stoker said he knew he was a blood descendant of Bram Stoker, author of the iconic Dracula, as a boy growing up in Montreal.

“When Halloween time came, it was like, ‘you’re a Stoker!’” remembers Mr. Stoker, 50, who now lives in South Carolina.

“You may be related to one of the greatest writers in history, but you don’t make a big deal about it.”

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He later confirmed that he was, precisely, the great-grandnephew of Abraham (Bram), and left it at that.

So, it came as a surprise when he got an e-mail from Ian Holt about five years ago. Mr. Holt, a New-York-based Dracula historian, wanted to “resurrect” the classic tale – which has been the subject of dozens of subsequent novels and films, none of which appeared to bear the Stoker name.

So Mr. Holt, 39, recruited the living Mr. Stoker to take part. Today, they have finished The Un-Dead, a 568-page manuscript set to see daylight next fall.

“I got in touch with Dacre and he thought I was this nut job. But after listening to me and discussing my vision of what I had in mind, he got very interested,” said Mr. Holt, an actor who originally pitched the idea as a film.

“He came up with the idea that if we really want to honour Bram, we should do it like a novel first. And it took off like a rocket.”

The novel is set 25 years after its famous predecessor, and follows the story of Quincey Harker, the son of original characters Jonathan Harker and Mina Murray. It ills in the back stories of the original characters while advancing the story of young Quincey, Mr. Holt said. He refused to go into specifics, saying only that a slew of characters reappear. Mr. Holt and Mr. Stoker have sold the Canadian, British and American publishing rights for several million dollars, their publishers say, and shooting is scheduled to begin on a film adaptation next year.

The Un-Dead has since swept up the lives of Mr. Holt and Mr. Stoker, a former teacher and Canadian Olympic pentathlon coach. He now works as a seminar instructor of, among other things, blood-borne pathogens.

“I’ve got a fascination with the body, having been a coach and athlete … the role of getting your blood in really good condition to compete. And here I am with this other side of me,” he said in an interview late yesterday evening.

“Yeah, I’ve got a lot to live up to.”

Appeared in the London Guardian

Stoker’s blood relation resurrects Dracula

• Alison Flood
• guardian.co.uk,
• Monday October 06 2008 14:42 BST
• Article history

  Van Helsing and his intrepid band of vampire hunters might have disposed of Bram Stoker’s creation Dracula more than a century ago, but a sequel to the novel by Stoker’s great grand-nephew will see them under attack from the undead once again.

Dacre Stoker delved into his ancestor’s handwritten notes on the original Dracula novel to pen his sequel, Dracula: The Un-Dead – the original name for Dracula before an editor changed the title. The novel, out next October, draws on excised characters, existing character back-stories and plot threads that were cut from Stoker’s original novel, first published 111 years ago.

The new book is set in London in 1912, a quarter of a century after the Count apparently “crumbled into dust”. Vampire-hunter Van Helsing’s protégé Dr Seward is now a disgraced morphine addict, and Quincey, the son of Stoker’s hero Jonathan, has become involved in a troubled theatre production of Dracula, directed and produced by Bram Stoker himself. The play plunges Quincey into the world of his parents’ terrible secrets, but before he can confront them a family member is found murdered, impaled in Piccadilly Circus.

The original is written in classic epistolatory form, alternating between different narrators; the sequel adopts a more direct storytelling route. “[This] makes it more immediately accessible to a modern thriller readership, while remaining faithful to the spirit and atmosphere of the Victorian original,” said publisher Jane Johnson of HarperCollins UK.

The book has caused a storm in the publishing world, selling for more than a million dollars to Dutton US, HarperCollins UK and Penguin Canada. A film version is also in the works, with shooting expected to begin next June.

Dacre Stoker, who formerly coached the Canadian Olympic Pentathlon team and now lives in the US, is writing the novel with Dracula historian Ian Holt, a member of The Transylvanian Society of Dracula. The Un-Dead is the first Dracula story to be fully authorized by the Stoker family since the 1931 film starring Bela Lugosi.

Stoker said he only got around to reading his great grand-uncle’s novel when he went to college. “Word got out about my family connection to the old vamp and I grew tired of being unable to answer people’s questions. So, I chose to finally break down and read the novel for a research paper on Bram and his possible motivations to write the story,” he said. “I had seen so many film versions of Dracula and was terribly surprised that very few of the films had any resemblance to Bram’s original novel. Because the novel was so good and had stood up so well over the years, I found it exceedingly sad that all of the trash Hollywood had put out monumentally sullied Bram’s and my family’s literary legacy.”

Stoker later met Holt, a screenwriter, and the pair decided to work together to resurrect Bram Stoker’s original themes and characters. “Our intent is to give both Bram and Dracula back their dignity,” Stoker said. “Maybe even more important is to give the novel’s legions of loyal fans what they have been waiting over a century for … the return of the real Dracula.”

Stoker’s original Dracula, the forefather of the wave of vampire novels currently flooding the bookshops, has never been out of print since it was published in 1897, and according to Dacre Stoker’s agent is only outsold by the Bible. The sequel will be competing with two other high profile vampire novels published next year: film director Guillermo del Toro’s debut The Strain, about a vampiric virus which invades New York, and Justin Cronin’s The Passage, about a vampire plague spawned by medical experiments.

Are you a writer by profession?

I have done many things so far in my life; I have been a school master, having taught Health and Physical Education, for twenty two years. In addition I have participated in the sport of Modern Pentathlon as an athlete and a coach at the World Championship and Olympic level. I currently teach fly-fishing, CPR and First Aid, head up a volunteer unit for the local Sheriff’s Office, and am the Executive Director of a land conservation organization. So working on this novel is another interesting chapter in my life. His notes show that Bram was meticulous in his research and attention for detail in preparation for writing Dracula. He learned of all the train schedules, local tides and weather patterns so historically the details in Dracula would be accurate. He handled his job as manager of the Lyceum Theater in London in the same way.  When the troop traveled Bram was responsible for all the plans and arrangements. I share this Stoker gene and it serves me well in my organizational efforts in the varied things I am involved with. This novel/ movie project is very exciting to me, I am involved with a very experienced team of people, a researcher and Victorian history buff, Alex Gallant, Ian Holt the Dracula scholar and screenwriter, and Ken Atchity our literary manager film producer.

Good evening, coven!  Dracula fans and horror aficionados should check out the Bram Stoker Film Festival, held in October in the town of Whitby, England.  Many of you will recognize Whitby from the original Dracula.

DTU’s very own Dacre Stoker, co-author of Dracula the Un-Dead, will be this year’s Festival President!  Check it out, and mark your calendars!  We look forward to meeting you all there!

http://www.bramstokerfilmfestival.com/

Ricardo Montalban passed away today at the age of 88.  Famously known for his roles as Mr. Roarke in “Fantasy Island” and Khan Noonien Singh in “Star Trek” and “Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan,” among others, Montalban cemented his place in our hearts.  Ricardo Montalban, you will be greatly missed.

Mr. Roarke

Khan

This book has been around for ages. Since 1897, it has been translated and printed in many countries. Because it has been in the public domain (Bram’s wife lost the copyrights after a lengthy legal battle) Dracula has spun off all sorts of stories, movies, toys, etc. So many of us have gotten to know Dracula through a wide variety of media and entertainment outlets.

A lot of people whom I have met during my research and writing of “Dracula The Un-Dead” are familiar with the many different versions and spin offs of Dracula, but not the actual characters from Bram’s original novel.

So I was just wondering how many of you have actually read the original version?

This is not a trick question, I am genuinely interested in knowing the answer, so please post a response. Have you read the original version?

Did anything notable or surprising occur during the writing process?

We discovered 124 pages of Bram’s handwritten notes on his original draft of his 1897 novel, “Dracula” stored at the Rosenbacjh Library in Philadelphia. In the notes we discovered characters and plot points and hints of existing character backgrounds that were edited out of Bram’s work. We used these bits of tantalizing clues as to what Bram Stoker had in mind to craft our sequel. It was almost as if the ghost of Bram was at ourside whispering in our ear as we wrote.

DTU would like to welcome everyone to the new year!  Happy 2009!  We wish you all the best for the new year, and look forward to sharing it with you!