Readers often tell me that they take my novelson holiday as travel and history guides. I love giving readers an experience on the page, but I love it even morewhen they are inspired to leave their armchairs and experience the charactersand the history firsthand. As anhistorical novelist, nothing informs my work like travel. I love to walk in my characters’ footsteps,breathing in the air that they breathed, literally sharing molecules with them.For Dracula in Love, which recreates Bran Stoker’s Victorian Gothic thriller from theperspective of Mina Harker, the vampire’s eternal muse, I planed to visit allof Stoker’s original haunted settings, but I also wanted to add some newgeography to an old story. Mina needed ahistory and a place of birth, both missing in the original. Moreover—and more radical—I wanted todisentangle Dracula from his Transylvanian roots. After all, Stoker made up that Dracula livedthere. Why couldn’t I change it?My first step was torelocate myself to London and into a temporary flat in Pimlico, where early in the story, a naïve Minadreams of settling with her future husband, Jonathan Harker. Later, I moved to a neighborhood developed in1890, the year in which the novel is set. (My flat, coincidentally, is not far from where Bram Stoker resided.)
Withoutintentionally planning it, I ended up literally living in the settings of mybook! I spent part of my days wanderingthrough the various collections at the Victoria & Albert Museum and the pre-Raphaeliteroom at the Tate. I soaked in theatmosphere at Highgate Cemetery, where Mina’s unfortunate friend Lucy isburied, and on Fleet Street, where another female character Kate Reid, a ladyjournalist ahead of her time, lives and works. I ate and drank in London’s historic pubs and restaurants, some of whichbecame settings in the novel. I also traveledto another famous Stoker location, Whitby, on the Yorkshire coast, taking thesame route Mina would have taken. Ilanded there during Goth Weekend, when vampire fans make an annual Halloween pilgrimage. There, I was treated the same windsweptcliffs, haunted churches and cemeteries, and red-roofed Victorian skylineinspired Stoker. In order to give Mina a history, I traced theroots of her maiden name, Murray, to Sligo, on the west coast of Ireland. I then discovered that Stoker’s mother wasborn there—a happy coincidence—and that he’d been influenced by its ghoststories and mystical folklore. With itsrocky sea-scape, ancient Celtic monuments, ominous skies, and fairy mounds,Sligo was indeed the perfect place for a girl with preternatural gifts to beborn, and for a vampire to discover and fall in love with his obsession. But Istill needed to find a new home for the vampire himself. Fortuitously, while reading a collection of Stoker’shandwritten notes, I discovered that his original choice for Dracula’s home wasStyria, in southern Austria, so I made a reconnaissance trip to explore itspossibilities. Again, I discovered a layered,lush landscape, fascinating Gothic and Baroque architecture, and a rich (andspooky) folkloric history, rife with tales of goblins, succubi, and witches. The city of Graz, perfectly preserved becauseit was not bombed in WWII, provided a great substitute to the Budapest of theoriginal. And the surroundingcountryside, with its foreboding mountaintop castles and inns, proved anevocative setting for the vampire’s lair.
Karen Essex
The authorKaren Essex is the national and international bestselling author of LEONARDO'S SWANS, KLEOPATRA, PHARAOH, and several other acclaimed novels, as well as an award-winning journalist and a screenwriter. She has written and developed many projects for major studios and networks and is currently developing a television series with Lions Gate Entertainment. Her books are published in twenty-nine languages. A native of New Orleans, she divides her time between Los Angeles and London.
The Book
In this wonderfully transporting novel, award-winning author Karen Essex turns a timeless classic inside out, spinning a haunting, erotic, and suspenseful story of eternal love and possession.
From the shadowy banks of the river Thames to the wild and windswept Yorkshire coast, Dracula’s eternal muse, Mina Murray, vividly recounts the intimate details of what really transpired between her and the Count—the joys and terrors of a passionate affair that has linked them through the centuries, and her rebellion against her own frightening preternatural powers.
Mina’s version of this gothic vampire tale is a visceral journey into Victorian England’s dimly lit bedrooms, mist-filled cemeteries, and asylum chambers, revealing the dark secrets and mysteries locked within. Time falls away as she is swept into a mythical journey far beyond mortal comprehension, where she must finally make the decision she has been avoiding for almost a millennium.
Bram Stoker’s classic novel offered one side of the story, in which Mina had no past and bore no responsibility for the unfolding events. Now, for the first time, the truth of Mina’s personal voyage, and of vampirism itself, is revealed. What this flesh and blood woman has to say is more sensual, more devious, and more enthralling than the Victorians could have expressed or perhaps even have imagined.
Listen to and watch an interview with Karen Essex
Giveaway details
There's 1 paperback copy of DRACULA IN LOVE for 1 lucky reader! To enter the giveaway contest, leave a comment and please tell us your favorite fictional vampire, either in literature, television, or the movies. Don't forget to add an e-mail address where we can contact you in case you win. (This contest is limited to US and Canada readers). Deadline 30 September. Good luck!
For more about Karen Essex and her work visit her
website: www.karenessex.comblog: www.karenessexblog.comFacebook: https://www.facebook.com/
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