A sequel 112 years in the making, picking up about a quarter of a century after the original, Dracula the Un-dead is written by the original author’s great-grand nephew Dacre Stoker and screen-writer and Dracula historian Ian Holt. 

Holt had approached Stoker with the idea of a screenplay in 2003, but was convinced that writing a novel was the way to approach a sequel.  After spending two years researching the book, including finding 125 pages of the original author’s handwritten notes, the pair were ready to start their task.

The new story has many of the original surviving gang appearing in it, such as Mina and Jonathan Harker, their son Quincy (who was introduced towards the end of the original story) and Dr Abraham Van Helsing. The sequel also updates some of the more graphic aspects of story-telling to 21st century standards, while incerting historical figures into the plot with bloody good results, such as Jack The Ripper and Elizabeth Bathory (the 16th century Hungarian countess charged with killing hundreds of women to bath in their blood). 

Given that the original story was published in Victorian England, many scenes could only then be hinted at or alluded to. “You’ve got to keep in mind the perspective.  The degree of sex and violence he (Bram Stoker) had, in this very stuffy and conservative Victorian society, was cutting edge at the time. Even the exposure of a woman’s flesh, the piercing of the flesh, was a metaphor for the sex act.” Stoker told CNN recently. 

“We had to keep up with what other people are doing, otherwise, our story would be toast.” said Stoker, no doubt in partial reference to Anne Rice’s Vampire Chronicles and Charlene Harris’ Sookie Stackhouse Novels, (the basis for the HBO series True Blood), as well as the change in writing style.  The original Dracula was told in a series of flashbacks via letters, journals and diary entries.

The pair are already starting work on a second sequel, and Holt is working on turning their first collaboration into that screenplay he originally wanted to write.  Buffy Summers was right when she told Dracula “You always come back”.

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