Monster Week: Harker

Got an email today from writer Tony Lee about his upcoming Dracula sequel from AAM/Markosia. According to the press release Harker covers:

...the lives of the main characters from the novel, six months on from the Count’s grisly death as they continue to try to piece their lives back together again.

But a ghostly visit from the past informs Jonathan Harker that the legacy of Count Dracula isn’t over, for there was one last bride, the Countess Von Gratz, otherwise known as the Countess Dracule, a Vampire never seen in the classic novel – and she intends to travel to London to reap revenge on the people who killed her late husband, as well as take for her own nefarious means the unborn child of Mina and Jonathan Harker.

And so a new chapter begins, as the surviving heroes from Dracula, Mina and Jonathan Harker, John Seward, Arthur Holmwood and Abraham Van Helsing band together to stop the Countess Dracule, her Gypsy servants, her recently arisen, un-dead assistant Renfield and her three ‘Grooms of Dracule’, Vampire lords who follow her every command. During this battle Abraham Van Helsing will face his own nightmares including the death of his son to Vampires, and John Seward will gain new ones in the bottom of a pharmaceutical bottle – but none will be as terrible as Mina’s nightmare – for Count Dracula still lives, an ethereal spirit, bound to her by blood and only seen by her as he waits for her son to be born – a son who’s blood is tainted with his own, a host body for his spirit…

Can Jonathan Harker truly kill the spectre of Dracula forever? And where will he be led in a story that visits a variety of locations from the original novel, including London, Exeter, Whitby, Munich and the Borgo Pass?

Lee also sent along some preview pages.

Jonathan Harker meets Quincey Morris's Ghost:




The resurrection of Renfield:




It's 112 pages long and coming out this October. Like Frankenstein's Monster, I'm always curious about new Dracula stuff and it's encouraging that this project has the support of the Stoker family and Leslie S. Klinger (whose Annotated Dracula I love). Plus, the more I read that summary, the more curious I am to see Lee's plot play out. Looking forward to this one.