Dracula has risen from the grave in a new book as the public appetite for vampire stories remains unabated. Steve Pratt talks to the descendant of Bram Stoker who’s breathing new life into the bloodsucking count.

DESPITE his famous relative, Dacre Stoker never read his book about bloodsucking Count Dracula until he was in college. “I was too busy before doing sport to worry about serious things like that,” he says.

He was aware of great-great uncle Bram Stoker and the iconic character created for his novel published in 1897, but never paid much attention to it.

“When we were children growing up we were aware of the book and the films, mostly because friends would poke fun around Halloween time,” he recalls.

All that has changed now. Dacre has joined with Ian Holt to write Dracula: The Un-Dead, the official sequel to the classic novel that was inspired partly by Bram Stoker’s time in the coastal fishing town of Whitby on the edge of the North York Moors.

With access to Bram Stoker’s hand-written notes for the original, he has included characters and plot threads cut from the original printing over a century ago.

“I knew a little about the history. There’s all this stuff on who and how Bram based his story,” he says.

“About six years ago, Ian Holt contacted me and said, ‘Why don’t you come and write a sequel?

I’ve never written much of anything, but we created a storyline and it went from there.

It’s been six years in the making.”

He gave up his teaching career to “squeeze in a trip to the dark side”, as he terms it. “I read the hand-written notes in the Rosenbach Museum, Philadelphia, got a feeling for them and found some things that didn’t make it into the original story,” he says.

“There was the aura of sitting there reading something written by a relative of mine. I don’t want to be corny and say it was spooky, but to see what this guy did was an experience.”

He found a reference to a policeman, Inspector Gotford, that make him realise how odd it was that the original novel contained no reference to law enforcers. “There’s no way he would have left a policeman out of the story,” says Dacre.

Bram Stoker himself is one of the characters in the sequel, set in 1912. He’s rehearsing a production of Dracula at London’s Lyceum Theatre where, in real life, he was personal assistant to actor Henry Irving and the theatre’s business manager.

Into the mix is thrown Quincey Harker, the grown son of Jonathan and Mina from the original novel, who yearns to be an actor but is prevented by his father who wants him to pursue a career in law. Then there’s Dr Jack Seward, now a disgraced morphine addict, who hunts vampires across Europe with the help of a mysterious benefactor.

While Dracula is an instantly recognisable fictional character, his creator Bram Stoker is more enigmatic. “His book is better known than he is,” says Dacre. “He never knew his book was a success. We thought we’d have him as a character in our book. Ian worked on the historical side and then we merged them.

“It’s a modernisation of the Dracula character with a merging of the fictional character and the fact-based Vlad. There’s fact and fiction in the book.”

Over the years, the Dracula story has been exploited by all and sundry. There was no licencing deal or economic benefits for the Stoker family – and also no control over how people treated the character.

“People have been very adaptable in the way they’ve put vampires into entertainment – Dracula On Mars, children’s toys, female vampires, then the move into the Twilight young readership and all the X-rated stuff.

“Now we have a Stoker on board who can bring back a little of Bram’s literary legacy.

That was really my incentive, to write the book as Bram would have done it,” says Dacre He read his great-great uncle’s journal and biographies of him, trying to get into his relative’s head. “What would he have written about these characters in relation to themselves?

“What we hope we’re going to do is help people reflect on the original. That’s not to say our book will ever be a classic but anything we can do to take them back to the original is good.”

Events have overtaken this official sequel as the public thirst for all things vampiric is as great as the count’s thirst for blood. From the Twilight books and now the film versions, to True Blood series on TV, people can’t get enough of vampires.

Perhaps people crave more escapism in these days when the economy is bad, he says. “When you think about it, there’s a little bit of everything in vampire stories – action, adventure, horror, violence, sexuality and promiscuity.

“But there remains the interest and allure of the possibility of immortality and people think, what if? It’s this primal thing – the power, both male and female power, in this whole idea of vampires.”

Dracula: The Un-Dead leaves the door open – or should that be coffin? – at the end of the story “as I think anyone wise would” for more books.

So Dracula may rise again.

“I’m going to wait and see how this one works out,” says Dacre, who is director of a land conservation organisation in South Carolina.

He already has had experience of fans of the character and the genre. “In my short time of meeting people I’ve found many varieties of vampire fans,” he says.

“There are the really serious vampire people who focus on living that lifestyle. Then there are people who are more scholarly and want to get everything just right. Then in between are those who just like a good story.”

■ Dracula: The Un-Dead by Dacre Stoker and Ian Holt, HarperFiction, £6.99