"2008 is the Year of the Vampire," viewers of ABC's Nightline were told on November 11th in response to the overwhelming popularity of Stephenie Meyer's four-volume Twilight Saga and the
imminent opening of the movie based on the first book of her vampire series, Twilight. Nightline also commented on the unqualified success of the edgy, more adult-oriented HBO series True
Blood, based on the Southern Vampire Mystery novels by Charlaine Harris. (In late May of 2009, Charlaine Harris' Dead and Gone was number one on the New York Times hardcover fiction best-seller
list.) This year the trend continues, with Halloween bracketed by the premieres of The Vampire's Assistant on October 23rd and The Twilight Saga: New Moon, which opened to a record midnight
audience, and the third-highest grossing weekend audience, on November 20th. On TV, just as True Blood aired its season finale in mid-September, The Vampire Diaries debuted on the CW network.
And yet, all of the thousands of vampire-based books and movies, dozens of TV series, and even a 38-year-old breakfast cereal owe their very existence to one character, Bram Stoker's Count
Dracula. "Approximately 200,000 people a year come to Romania in search of Dracula," Morley Safer told viewers of 60 Minutes on May 29, 2005, in an episode titled "Counting on the Count." Also
in 2005, Little, Brown and Co. bought the rights to Elizabeth Kostova's debut novel, The Historian, for ＄2 million, and Sony Pictures bought the film rights for another ＄1.5 million. The
Historian, which has as its central thesis the missing and possibly still-alive body of Vlad the Impaler--the historical Count Dracula--from his tomb at Snagov Island in Romania, was one of
three debut novels to win the Nielsen Bookscan Bestseller Award for 2005. Bram Stoker's 1897 novel, Dracula, which has spawned over 600 different films since F.W. Murnau's 1922 silent classic
Nosferatu, has never been out of print, and in the year of the novel's centennial there were Dracula conferences and celebrations in New York City, Miami, Los Angeles, and other cities in
England, France, and Belgium. Worldwide fascination with Dracula, like the bloodthirsty Count himself, will never die. Completed and comprising approximately 30,000 words and 197 photographs,
In the Footsteps of Dracula: A Personal Journey and Travel Guide is the first and only book to include: * For the armchair traveler, pictures and descriptions, in memoir form, of every site in
England and Romania that is closely related to either Bram Stoker's fictional Count Dracula or his historical counterpart, Prince Vlad Dracula the Impaler. * A thorough history based on
original research and face-to-face interviews with experts--such as the Man in Black of Whitby, England--of how the novel Dracula came into being, and almost never happened. * The true life
story of Vlad the Impaler, connecting his lineage for the first time in print to the Brotherhood of the Wolf, which had already survived for two thousand years when Prince Vlad was born in
1431. * For the independent traveler who would leave his armchair for the Great Unknown, a Practical Guide to the Dracula Trail, including a complete Sample Itinerary with recommendations for
lodging and detailed instructions on traveling to each British or Romanian Dracula-related town or site. Also in the Practical Guide are maps and sections on money; recommended reading; modes
of transportation; security and health; internet access, shopping, and cable TV; and alternatives to independent travel.
