Skip to main content

Dracula's Guest

 Dracula's Guest by Bram Stoker was section that was supposed to have been cut from the novel.  The event in the short story happens on Walpurgis Night, April 30th near Munich.  In the novel on the same night, Jonathan Harker was near Dracula's castle in Transylvania.


In the short story, Johan, is an adventurous Englishman on business.  He strays off the beaten against the advice of the carriage driver.  Where he comes across some ruins and soon learns that he should have listened.


This short story shows off Bram Stoker's writing style very well.   Like Dracula the story filled vivid and active descriptions.  Science fiction owes a lot to Stoker's writing style and to the novel 'Dracula.'


It is easy to see why this portion was cut out.  It moves too fast for the Dracula story.  In the novel, there was a build up before showing the monster.  This was so that Stoker could build the world in the story.  The short story showed a monster right away and went right into the legendary characteristics of the monster.  So if this was an earlier draft, then it is easy to see why it was cut for carriage ride Harker was give by Dracula in the novel.


Dracula's Guest was originally published in Dracula's Guest and Other Weird Stories in 1914.  The Audio program I listened to was narrated by James Mio.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Trends on Horror

Here are some trends I picked up on recently.
The big push for horror isn’t in October.  It’s June, July and August.  As someone who self publishes books, I’m not at all interested in what’s trending.  Mainly because I just need to write as many and publish as many books as possible.  Following trends gets thrown out the window when you want to publish four to six books a year.
I already knew that books and dvds, perhaps most streaming get released on Tuesdays.  At one time I knew why.
It was the whole business of everything getting shifted because of the pandemic that I realized that the push for horror was June through August.  Harrow the Ninth was supposed to be released in 25 June and now is 4 August.  The Night of the Mannequins by Stephen Graham Jones was supposed to be released on 14 July and is now 1 September.  That was supposed to be my Birthday book this year.What I found out about Stephen Graham Jones is that a novel of his should have already been released, but it got pushed…
Post a Comment
Read more

my first and only read of The Deathly Hallows

When Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows came out, I lived in Korea.  There is a fourteen hour time difference between Seoul and Omaha.  I went to the book store on the day it was released, like when the book store opened and bought my copy.  I started to read it on the bus ride home.  When I got to my apartment, I read it that day plus the day after.  I was determined to be the first in my family to have finished the book.  I ordered take out from the restaurant on the first floor of my apartment building and snacked on stuff I already had.  The book came out on a Saturday, which is unusual because books are normally released on a Tuesday.  I had no contact with the rest of the world, well accept for when I skyped my mother on our weekly calls.  I read the 700+ page book in two days.  And that was all I did that weekend.  When I finished book, I couldn't actually see that well, like everything was a blur for the two days that followed.  It was the last time I read a large book w…
Post a Comment
Read more

The Stone of Destiny

The other movie I watched this weekend was also a biopic: The Stone of Destiny.  It was about four Scottish college students who went to Westminster Abby and stole a six hundred pound stone, which was a Scottish treasure.  I enjoyed it.  A bunch of Scottish students banding together to steal a national treasure back from the English. The movie was based off of a book, the writer was the leader of this little band.  After the events of the book, he went on to become a lawyer.  They pull off the heist and a few months later they returned the stone.  All involved were accused of stealing the stone, but never charged.  England was worried that if they charged the students with the theft of the stone, there would be riots by the Scottish and so dropped the charges.
Post a Comment
Read more